论文部分内容阅读
In 2013,the president of the People’s Republic of China announced that the Chinese government intended to create the most ambitious regional economic cooperation initiative of the 21 st century,the Belt and Road initiative.The Belt and Road initiative is an initiative that aims to improve regional integration,increase trade and stimulate economic growth by way of mega infrastructure projects.The initiative is subdivided into two main components,with the Silk Road Economic Belt representing the initiative’s land component,and the 21 st Century Maritime Silk Road representing the sea component.The Silk Road Economic Belt focuses on improving regional cooperation through better connectivity among countries located along the ancient Silk Road.The countries belonging to the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative are the main focus of this thesis.The first purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between transportation infrastructure,more specifically railway and roadway infrastructure,and economic growth in Silk Road Economic Belt countries.The second purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the economic impact of participating in the initiative.This research employs panel data analysis which includes 57 countries,36 of which belong to the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative,using the annual data from the period 2007 to 2017.The regression model was formed by taking GDP per capita growth as the dependent variable,roadway infrastructure and railway infrastructure as explanatory variables,and a set of control variables was added to complement the model.The fixed effects model was used to obtain the results,supported by the Hausman test and poolability F-test.The findings reveal that there is a negative relationship between roadway infrastructure and economic growth,while railway infrastructure was statistically insignificant.The negative relationship between roadway infrastructure and economic growth diminishes once countries participate in the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative.These findings underline the importance of road infrastructure development,providing policy makers sufficient information and evidence that joining the initiative has a positive impact on the economic growth of countries.There are certain limitations that are associated with this thesis,future studies are advised to include more years in their data set,include variables that might have been omitted in this thesis,and instrumental variables should be added to solve possible endogeneity issues.