China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the most ambitious infrastructure investment efforts in history, representing great potential for stimulating regional economic growth in Asia, Europe and Africa. This study collects cross-country panel data from 2007 to 2016 and investigates the impact of transport infrastructure (railway and road) on the economic growth in the BRI countries. First, a spatial-temporal characteristics analysis of transport infrastructure and economic growth is presented. Then, the global Moran’s I and the local Moran scatterplot are employed to test for possible spatial autocorrelations. Finally, both static and dynamic spatial models are utilized to empirically examine the impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth from the national and regional perspectives. The estimation results at the national level reveal that the transport infrastructure in the BRI countries plays an essential role in facilitating economic growth. Moreover, this study finds significantly positive spatial spillover effects of economic growth in the categories of geographical distance, economic distance, cultural distance, and institutional distance spatial weight matrices, i.e., shorter geographical distances and economic, cultural and institutional similarities among the BRI countries lead to mutual economic growth. The estimation results at the regional level indicate that the spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure are significantly negative in East Asia-Central Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States and in South Asia. On the contrary, the positive spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on economic growth is most pronounced in Central and Eastern Europe. This indicates the polarization effect in the initial stage of the lagging transport infrastructure and the diffusion effects after the transport infrastructure is mature. This study is valuable because it examines the impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth in the BRI countries. In addition, two policy suggestions for driving the regional economy in the BRI countries are given.

Railway and road infrastructure in the Belt and Road Initiative countries: Estimating the impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth

Does sustainable growth, energy consumption and environment challenges matter for Belt and Road Initiative feat? A novel empirical investigation

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under the auspices of the Chinese government was created as a regional integration and development model between China and her trade partners. Arguments have been raised as to whether this initiative will be beneficial to participating countries in the long run. We set to examine how to estimate this trade initiative by comparing the relative estimation powers of the traditional gravity model with the neural network analysis using detailed bilateral trade exports data from 1990 to 2017. The results show that neural networks are better than the gravity model approach in learning and clarifying international trade estimation. The neural networks with fixed country effects showed a more accurate estimation compared to a baseline model with country-year fixed effects, as in the OLS estimator and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood. On the other hand, the analysis indicated that more than 50% of the 6 participating East African countries in the BRI were able to attain their predicted targets. Kenya achieved an 80% (4 of 5) target. Drawing from the lessons of the BRI and the use of neural network model, it will serve as an important reference point by which other international trade interventions could be measured and compared.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1449/pdf

Estimating China’s Trade with Its Partner Countries within the Belt and Road Initiative Using Neural Network Analysis

A substantial amount of transportation research has been gathered under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), suggesting multi-dimensional impacts of the BRI on the transportation industry. This ...

Transport research under Belt and Road Initiative: current trends and future research agenda

This article investigates the effects of China’s outward direct investment (ODI) on the institutional quality of the Belt and Road (B&R) countries. Based on a panel data set of 63 B&R countries during the period 2003 to 2016, we find that China’s ODI improves the institutional quality of B&R countries not only in the short run but also in the long run. Further, although China’s ODI exerts no differential impacts on host country institutional dimensions of “control of corruption,” “government effectiveness,” and “political stability” in countries with different natural resource endowments, it improves their institutional dimensions of “regulatory quality” and “rule of law,” implying that China’s ODI may help the host B&R countries minimize the “resource curse”. As one of the most important strategies for China’s opening-up development in the current era, the B&R initiative serves as means to promote sustainable development of B&R countries. The article therefore contributes to existing scholarship on the institutional effects of China’s ODI and sheds light on the mechanisms that drive sustainable development.

Does China’s Outward Direct Investment Improve the Institutional Quality of the Belt and Road Countries?

The One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative is implemented to improve the linkage between China and its neighboring countries in terms of economic ties, connectivity, partnership, and security cooperation. The crucial challenge encountered in OBOR initiative is the different gauge standards from different countries in the development of railway along the Silk Road. Another issue arose from the regulation of education sector in the aspect of quality, cost, and efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, there is still lack of study on the transportation infrastructure and education towards the GDP in the selected Asian countries, especially for Central Asia. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of OBOR initiative and its importance towards economic growth by further investigating the determinants such as transportation infrastructure, education, labor, trade, and inflation rate. This study employs panel data analysis using the annual data from the period of 2000–2015. The selected Asian countries are divided into three regions, namely Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), ASEAN (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia), and East Asia (China, Mongolia). Besides, we use fixed effect model (FEM) to obtain the results based on the support of Hausman test and Poolability F-test. The findings reveal that transportation infrastructure possess a positive effect on GDP. Surprisingly, education is negatively related to GDP. With this, policy makers are suggested to encourage OBOR countries to expand and upgrade their system in terms of transportation infrastructure, human capital, culture, and education. In future studies, the advanced model is recommended to investigate the pre- and post-efficiency of OBOR initiative.

Ching-Mei Lee

Papers

Is Transportation Infrastructure Important to the One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative? Empirical Evidence from the Selected Asian Countries