光华讲坛——社会名流与企业家论坛第 5646 期

主题：Catching the wind：Transportation and Knowledge Spillover 交通运输与知识外溢性

主讲人：马光荣，中国人民大学财政金融学院教授

主持人：西南财经大学经济与管理研究院  叶菁菁副教授

时间：2019年12月10日（周二）上午10:00—11:30

地点：西南财经大学柳林校区格致楼1211

主办单位：经济与管理研究院  科研处

主讲人简介：

马光荣，中国人民大学财政金融学院教授，博士毕业于北京大学国家发展研究院，主要研究方向为财政学和发展经济学，学术成果发表在American Economic Review、Journal of Comparative Economics、《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《管理世界》等学术期刊，支持国家自然科学基金项目多项，获得过中国经济学博士论文奖、财政部全国优秀财政理论成果奖、洪银兴经济学奖、邓子基财经论文奖等。

内容提要：

This paper exploits exogenous variation in the construction of China’s High-Speed Railway (HSR) system to estimate the effect of reduction in transportation costs on the extent of geographical localization of knowledge spillovers in China. We show that connection to the HSR network leads to a 0.9% annual increase in the knowledge diffusion from a source (patent) to a beneficiary (city). The contribution of HSR connection is significantly positive even for cities located very faraway (within 3000km) from the source. However, the marginal benefit declines sharply over distance, with cities within 500 km enjoy the largest increase. We also show that peripheral cities—as opposed to metropolitan centers—experience significant improvement in innovation performance, possibly through the channel of enhanced spillover.  Thus, transportation infrastructure mitigates regional disparity in knowledge accumulation and innovation. This paper exploits exogenous variation in the construction of China’s High-Speed Railway (HSR) system to estimate the effect of reduction in transportation costs on the extent of geographical localization of knowledge spillovers in China. We show that connection to the HSR network leads to a 0.9% annual increase in the knowledge diffusion from a source (patent) to a beneficiary (city). The contribution of HSR connection is significantly positive even for cities located very faraway (within 3000km) from the source. However, the marginal benefit declines sharply over distance, with cities within 500 km enjoy the largest increase. We also show that peripheral cities—as opposed to metropolitan centers—experience significant improvement in innovation performance, possibly through the channel of enhanced spillover.  Thus, transportation infrastructure mitigates regional disparity in knowledge accumulation and innovation.

本文利用中国高速铁路（HSR）系统构建过程中的外生变化来估算运输成本降低对中国知识溢出本地化的影响范围。我们发现，与高铁网络的连接导致知识从（专利）源到受益（城市）的传播每年增加0.9％。即使在距源头很远（3000公里以内）的城市，高铁连接的贡献也是正向并且显著的。但是，边际收益随距离的增加而急剧下降，距离500公里以内的城市收益增幅最大。我们还发现，与大城市中心区相比，外围城市的创新绩效有显着提高，可能是通过加强溢出效应的渠道实现的。上述结果表明，运输基础设施减轻了知识积累和创新方面的地区差距。