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Transport costs and China’s exports: Some empirical evidences

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Abstract

Based on a new panel data set covering exports of four Chinese port cities to 32 countries and Hong Kong over the period of 1997–2008, this paper extends the conventional gravity model to assess the impacts of transport costs and port efficiency on China’s exports. The results can be summarized as three main findings: (1) The improvements of port efficiency and reduction of road transport costs play a vital role in China’s export competitiveness in the global market. The coefficient estimates on them are relatively large, around 0.72 and −0.89, respectively; (2) The effect of transport costs and port efficiency on China-to-Asia exports significantly exceeds that on China-to-Europe and China-to-America exports; (3) The overall estimated elasticity of road, railroad and port measure is 1.66, which is almost three times that of the average wage of port cities. The empirical results provide strong evidences that upgrading China’s transport service networks should offer greater scope for maintaining and increasing its competitive edge in low cost productions. The findings offer some insights and priorities for government policy making.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tourism Institute, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lizhi Xu

  2. School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Lizhi Xu

  3. College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Lizhi Xu

  4. Department of Industrial Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695, USA

    Shu-Cherng Fang

  5. Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Xun Zhang

Authors
  1. Lizhi Xu
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  2. Shu-Cherng Fang
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  3. Xun Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xun Zhang.

Additional information

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 71101142 and 70903067.

This paper was recommended for publication by Editor Wang Shouyang.

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Xu, L., Fang, SC. & Zhang, X. Transport costs and China’s exports: Some empirical evidences. J Syst Sci Complex 26, 365–382 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-013-1259-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-013-1259-6

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