1 Introduction
2 Theoretical background and hypothesis development
2.1 Linking transport infrastructures and logistics to firm performance in emerging economies
2.2 Empirical evidence and hypothesis development
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Hypothesis 1: Transport networks are positively related to the performance of firms in emerging economies.
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Hypothesis 2: Transport nodes are positively related to the performance of firms in emerging economies.
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Hypothesis 3: The performance of the logistics system is positively related to the performance of firms in emerging economies.
2.3 Measures of transport infrastructures
Authors | Transport variables | Model | Time period | Geography | Results | Knowledgespillover effects |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bergantino et al. (2013) | Density (and extension) of railway and road network. Air accessibility as the total number of passengers | Two-step DEA | 1995–2012 | 20 Italian regions | Accessibility and transport network infrastructure improve R&D efficiency by facilitating connections and knowledge transfer among R&D producers | Yes (railway and road network) Yes (air accessibility) |
Bottasso et al. (2014) | Port total throughput Accessibility index at inter-regional level Motorways in km of network | Spatial Durbin model (SDM) | 1998–2009 | Regions of 13 European countries | Spillover effects of port throughput exist locally. Globally, knowledge spillovers tend to directly affect neighbouring units | Yes (port activity) |
Audretsch et al. (2015) | Number of motorway interchanges Number of long-distance train stations | OLS with clustered standard errors | 2000–2004 | German municipalities | Railway infrastructures conduce to new firm start-ups, mainly in technology-oriented services, consumer-related services and retail trade, not in high-technology or low-technology manufacturing No impact of highway infrastructures | Yes (railway accessibility) No (highway accessibility) |
Agrawal et al. (2017) | Instrumental variables: total number of kilometres of highway in 1947 Major railroad lines in km from about 1898 | OLS and IV | 1983–1988 | 268 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in USA | 10% increase in a region’s stock of highways causes a 1.7% increase in regional patenting over a 5-year period Positive impact of roads on regional innovation at the more disaggregated MSA-technology-class level. Positive impact of railways on innovation activities in the 1980s | Yes (highways and railroads network) |
Wang et al. (2018) | Road area density: the share of road area in the city's total administrative area | OLS and IV | 1998–2007 | All manufacturing enterprises in China | A 10% increase in road density would increase a firm’s number of patents by 0.71%, corporate R&D investment by 1.42% and the probability to have patents would increase by 0.39% | Yes (road connectivity) |
Bottasso et al. (2022) | Total number of kilometres of motorways Major roman roads 117 AD as IV | Social network analysis (SNA) Gravity model | 1978–2015 | Italian regions | Denser highway networks favour collaborations among inventors. Node centrality within a collaboration network exerts a positive impact on regional innovation | Yes (highway network) |
Yang et al. (2021) | HSR dummy variable Number of HSR stations Number of HSR lines Road passenger volume per 10,000 people Air passenger traffic | Cobb–Douglas production function | 2003–2013 | 285 cities above prefecture-level in China | HSR promote innovation with an effect value of 14.73% in China regions. HSR promotes innovation convergence among cities Significant and positive effect of road and airlines status | Yes (HRS accessibility and connectivity measures, road and airport flows) |
Miwa et al (2022) | HSR dummy Expressway dummy ED as regional accessibility for HRS and expressways | Difference-in-differences (DID) model, propensity score matching and IV | 1976–2016 | 1741 municipalities in Japan | HSR on regional innovation in small towns and villages is larger than that in large cities. Expressways do not stimulate regional innovation | Yes (HRS accessibility) No (expressway accessibility) |
Tang et al. (2022) | Dummy variable whether high-speed railway opens in a city | Time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model Super SBM-DEA model | 2006–2016 | China cities | Knowledge spillovers are important manifestations through which HSR promotes regional innovation. HSR can significantly improve the level of total factor productivity and human capital. Urban form mediates the impact of HSR on regional innovation significantly | Yes (HRS accessibility) |
3 Data and variables
Variable | Obs. | Mean | St. dev. | Min | Max |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Firm-level variables | |||||
Labour productivity | 10,954 | 121.49 | 1021.97 | 0 | 73,700.00 |
Capital | 10,954 | 5.97 | 266.27 | 0 | 27,200.00 |
Start-up | 10,954 | 0.15 | 0.36 | 0 | 1 |
Exporter | 10,954 | 0.22 | 0.42 | 0 | 1 |
Qualification | 10,954 | 32.67 | 30.81 | 0 | 100 |
Foreign | 10,954 | 0.07 | 0.26 | 0 | 1 |
Country-level variables | |||||
Gap | 32 | 3.26 | 3.14 | 1 | 15.01 |
Road | 32 | 0.63 | 0.59 | 0.03 | 2.18 |
Rail | 31 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0 | 0.12 |
Airport | 32 | 0.47 | 0.40 | 0.03 | 1.62 |
Port | 32 | 3.19 | 2.87 | 0 | 11 |
LPI | 31 | 2.82 | 0.31 | 2.25 | 3.43 |
Gap | Road | Rail | Airport | Port | LPI | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Albania | 3.25 | 0.12 | 0.015 | 0.14 | 4 | 2.62 |
Armenia | 4.73 | 0.26 | 0.028 | 0.37 | 0 | 2.54 |
Azerbaijan | 2.11 | 0.22 | 0.024 | 0.43 | 1 | 2.56 |
Belarus | 1.93 | 0.48 | 0.026 | 0.31 | 2 | 2.61 |
Bosnia Herzegovina | 3.35 | 0.34 | 0.020 | 0.47 | 5 | 2.82 |
Bulgaria | 2.12 | 0.2 | 0.036 | 0.61 | 2 | 3.02 |
Croatia | 1.6 | 0.56 | 0.048 | 1.22 | 6 | 2.97 |
Cyprus | 1 | 1.38 | . | 1.62 | 5 | 3.19 |
Czech Republic | 1.15 | 1.69 | 0.120 | 1.62 | 3 | 3.32 |
Estonia | 1.35 | 1.32 | 0.018 | 0.40 | 6 | 3.01 |
FYR Macedonia | 2.86 | 0.54 | 0.027 | 0.39 | 0 | 2.69 |
Georgia | 4.54 | 0.27 | 0.022 | 0.32 | 2 | 2.89 |
Greece | 1.27 | 0.89 | 0.019 | 0.58 | 7 | 3.08 |
Hungary | 1.45 | 2.18 | 0.085 | 0.44 | 5 | 2.76 |
Kazakhstan | 1.56 | 0.04 | 0.005 | 0.04 | 5 | . |
Kosovo | 4.06 | 0.18 | 0.031 | 0.55 | 0 | 2.49 |
Kyrgyzstan | 11.36 | 0.17 | 0.002 | 0.14 | 1 | 3.01 |
Latvia | 1.68 | 0.92 | 0.029 | 0.65 | 2 | 3.04 |
Lithuania | 1.45 | 1.29 | 0.027 | 0.93 | 3 | 2.67 |
Moldova | 7.94 | 0.28 | 0.034 | 0.21 | 0 | 2.45 |
Mongolia | 3.74 | 0.03 | 0.001 | 0.03 | 0 | 2.25 |
Montenegro | 2.29 | 0.57 | 0.018 | 0.36 | 1 | 2.44 |
Poland | 1.45 | 1.34 | 0.063 | 0.40 | 5 | 3.43 |
Romania | 1.83 | 0.38 | 0.045 | 0.19 | 6 | 2.92 |
Russia | 1.37 | 0.08 | 0.005 | 0.07 | 9 | 2.6 |
Serbia | 2.56 | 0.5 | 0.046 | 0.29 | 1 | 2.74 |
Slovak Republic | 1.28 | 0.92 | 0.074 | 0.71 | 2 | 3.14 |
Slovenia | 1.15 | 1.95 | 0.060 | 0.79 | 1 | 3.08 |
Tajikistan | 15.01 | 0.19 | 0.004 | 0.17 | 0 | 2.32 |
Turkey | 1.69 | 0.47 | 0.012 | 0.12 | 11 | 3.37 |
Ukraine | 4.01 | 0.28 | 0.036 | 0.31 | 6 | 2.71 |
Uzbekistan | 7.43 | 0.19 | 0.010 | 0.12 | 1 | 2.63 |
Average | 3.27 | 0.63 | 0.032 | 0.47 | 3 | 2.82 |
4 Firm performance nested in countries: the multilevel modelling approach
5 Results and discussion
5.1 Baseline regressions
Variance-components model | Random-intercept model | Random-coefficients model | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | ||||
Fixed effects | ||||||
For intercept (β0j) | ||||||
Constant (γ00) | 10.1653*** | (0.1746) | 9.6720*** | (0.1740) | 9.6792*** | (0.1735) |
For slopes (β1j… β5j) | ||||||
Capital (γ1j) | 0.0455*** | (0.0035) | 0.0449*** | (0.0041) | ||
Start-up (γ2j) | −0.0522 | (0.0355) | −0.0948** | (0.0454) | ||
Exporter (γ3j) | 0.2038*** | (0.0336) | 0.1902*** | (0.0497) | ||
Qualification (γ4j) | 0.0060*** | (0.0005) | 0.0055*** | (0.0007) | ||
Foreign (γ5j) | 0.2875*** | (0.0481) | 0.2843*** | (0.0686) | ||
Sector dummies (δ0k) | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
Random effects | ||||||
Constant (u0j) | 0.7619** | (0.0964) | 0.7536** | (0.0955) | 0.7762** | (0.0960) |
Capital (u1j) | 0.0086*** | (0.0088) | ||||
Start-up (u2j) | 0.0904*** | (0.0485) | ||||
Exporter (u3j) | 0.1847*** | (0.0518) | ||||
Qualification (u4j) | 0.0025*** | (0.0007) | ||||
Foreign (u5j) | 0.2501*** | (0.0700) | ||||
Residuals | 1.3067*** | (0.0088) | 1.2805*** | (0.0087) | 1.2744*** | (0.0087) |
Log likelihood | −18,545.16 | −18,324.25 | −18,305.53 | |||
Level 1 firms | 10,954 | 10,954 | 10,954 | |||
Level 2 countries | 32 | 32 | 32 | |||
LR test | 2467.20*** | 2197.15*** | 2234.59*** | |||
ICC | 0.254 | (0.048) | 0.257 | (0.048) | 0.256 | (0.049) |
5.2 The role of transport infrastructures and logistics
Intercept-as-outcome models | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | ||||||
Fixed effects | ||||||||||
For intercept (β0j) | ||||||||||
Constant (γ00) | 9.5952*** | (0.1829) | 9.7462*** | (0.2143) | 9.7493*** | (0.2050) | 10.0402*** | (0.2236) | 7.2651*** | (0.8529) |
Gap (γ10) | −0.0447*** | (0.0090) | −0.0514*** | (0.0106) | −0.0519*** | (0.0104) | −0.0605*** | (0.0118) | −0.0504*** | (0.0100) |
Road (γ20) | 0.6482*** | (0.1351) | ||||||||
Rail (γ30) | 8.5638** | (3.5558) | ||||||||
Airport (γ40) | 0.0006*** | (0.0002) | ||||||||
Port (γ50) | 0.0238 | (0.0358) | ||||||||
LPI (γ60) | 0.9836*** | (0.2864) | ||||||||
For slopes (β1j… β5j) | ||||||||||
Capital (γ1j) | 0.0454*** | (0.0040) | 0.0460*** | (0.0040) | 0.0452*** | (0.0041) | 0.0452*** | (0.0041) | 0.0460*** | (0.0041) |
Start-up (γ2j) | −0.0943** | (0.0454) | −0.0913** | (0.0456) | −0.0946** | (0.0455) | −0.0941** | (0.0453) | −0.0935** | (0.0471) |
Exporter (γ3j) | 0.1884*** | (0.0486) | 0.1945*** | (0.0498) | 0.1900*** | (0.0487) | 0.1913*** | (0.0493) | 0.1862*** | (0.0494) |
Qualification (γ4j) | 0.0055*** | (0.0007) | 0.0056*** | (0.0007) | 0.0055*** | (0.0007) | 0.0055*** | (0.0007) | 0.0055*** | (0.0008) |
Foreign (γ5j) | 0.2829*** | (0.0689) | 0.2809*** | (0.0689) | 0.2851*** | (0.0685) | 0.2855*** | (0.0686) | 0.2699*** | (0.0682) |
Industry dummies (δ0k) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||
Random effects | ||||||||||
Constant (u0j) | 0.3790*** | (0.0518) | 0.4744*** | (0.0616) | 0.4477*** | (0.0598) | 0.5033*** | (0.0662) | 0.4219*** | (0.0576) |
Capital (u1j) | 0.0076*** | (0.0104) | 0.0073*** | (0.0108) | 0.0087*** | (0.0087) | 0.0087*** | (0.0088) | 0.0078*** | (0.0103) |
Start-up (u2j) | 0.0910*** | (0.0489) | 0.0898*** | (0.0496) | 0.0918*** | (0.0493) | 0.0900*** | (0.0490) | 0.0935*** | (0.0516) |
Exporter (u3j) | 0.1760*** | (0.0508) | 0.1815*** | (0.0524) | 0.1765*** | (0.0513) | 0.1814*** | (0.0515) | 0.1772*** | (0.0508) |
Qualification (u4j) | 0.0025*** | (0.0007) | 0.0026*** | (0.0007) | 0.0025*** | (0.0007) | 0.0026*** | (0.0007) | 0.0027*** | (0.0007) |
Foreign (u5j) | 0.2520*** | (0.0518) | 0.2504*** | (0.0702) | 0.2496*** | (0.0697) | 0.2497*** | (0.0698) | 0.2379*** | (0.0576) |
Residuals | 1.2745*** | (0.0087) | 1.2778*** | (0.0088) | 1.2745*** | (0.0087) | 1.2744*** | (0.0087) | 1.2842*** | (0.0089) |
Log likelihood | −18,284.80 | −17,978.64 | −18,289.75 | −18,293.23 | −17,768.38 | |||||
Level 1 firms | 10,954 | 10,751 | 10,954 | 10,954 | 10,595 | |||||
Level 2 countries | 32 | 31 | 32 | 32 | 31 | |||||
LR test | 728.52*** | 965.92*** | 923.55*** | 1,121.67*** | 836.15*** | |||||
ICC | 0.081 | (0.020) | 0.112 | (0.027) | 0.110 | (0.026) | 0.135 | (0.031) | 0.0974 | (0.024) |
6 Robustness check
6.1 Bayesian model based on MCMC approach
Log of labour productivity (sales in USD/employee) | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Linear regression model | Multilevel model | |||||||
Simulated posterior distribution of the parameters | 95% credible intervals | Simulated posterior distribution of the parameters | 95% credible intervals | |||||
Mean | MCSE | Min. | Max. | Mean | MCSE | Min. | Max. | |
Firm-level variables | ||||||||
Constant | 9.0147 | (0.0022) | 8.9707 | 9.0608 | 9.6009 | (0.0173) | 9.3075 | 9.9156 |
Capital | 0.0460 | (0.0003) | 0.0409 | 0.0505 | 0.0455 | (0.0000) | 0.0387 | 0.0524 |
Start-up | −0.0609 | (0.0017) | −0.0956 | −0.0275 | −0.0524 | (0.0003) | −0.1233 | 0.0175 |
Exporter | 0.1968 | (0.0033) | 0.1538 | 0.2416 | 0.2040 | (0.0003) | 0.1391 | 0.2681 |
Qualification | 0.0062 | (0.0000) | 0.0055 | 0.0070 | 0.0060 | (0.0000) | 0.0051 | 0.0069 |
Foreign | 0.2885 | (0.0056) | 0.2027 | 0.3734 | 0.2870 | (0.0003) | 0.1928 | 0.3802 |
Sector dummies | Yes | Yes | ||||||
Country dummies | Yes | |||||||
Country clustered | Yes | |||||||
Random intercept | 0.6238 | (0.0014) | 0.3715 | 1.0374 | ||||
Av. efficiency | 0.006527 | 0.7376 | ||||||
Log marginal likelihood | -18,600.04 | -18,316.28 | ||||||
DIC | 36,497.46 | 36,559.11 |
6.2 Alternative specification of the Cobb–Douglas production function
Intercept-as-outcome models: robustness check | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
Fixed effects | ||||||
For intercept (β0j) | ||||||
Constant (γ00) | 8.4717*** | 8.3966*** | 8.5624*** | 8.5166*** | 8.7310*** | 6.8867*** |
(0.1970) | (0.2074) | (0.2295) | (0.2165) | (0.2321) | (0.7724) | |
Gap (γ10) | −0.0347*** | −0.0408*** | −0.0398*** | −0.0461*** | −0.0399*** | |
(0.0079) | (0.0093) | (0.0087) | (0.0098) | (0.0090) | ||
Road (γ20) | 0.5075*** | |||||
(0.1185) | ||||||
Rail (γ30) | 6.0397** | |||||
(3.0654) | ||||||
Airport (γ40) | 0.0005*** | |||||
(0.0002) | ||||||
Port (γ50) | 0.0202 | |||||
(0.0288) | ||||||
LPI (γ60) | 0.6763*** | |||||
(0.2559) | ||||||
For slopes (β1j… β5j) | ||||||
Capital (γ1j) | 0.0316*** | 0.0320*** | 0.0310*** | 0.0314*** | 0.0320*** | 0.0322*** |
(0.0080) | (0.0079) | (0.0080) | (0.0079) | (0.0079) | (0.0080) | |
Inputs (γ2j) | 0.1631*** | 0.1630*** | 0.1631*** | 0.1632*** | 0.1630*** | 0.1612*** |
(0.0079) | (0.0079) | (0.0080) | (0.0079) | (0.0079) | (0.0080) | |
Industry dummies (δ0k) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Random effects | ||||||
Constant (u0j) | 0.5754* | 0.02991* | 0.3692* | 0.3435* | 0.3903* | 0.3489* |
(0.0788) | (0.0476) | (0.0557) | (0.0528) | (0.0576) | (0.0542) | |
Residuals | 1.0279*** | 1.0278*** | 1.0301*** | 1.0280*** | 1.0279*** | 1.0306*** |
(0.0154) | (0.0155) | (0.0156) | (0.0155) | (0.0155) | (0.0156) | |
Log likelihood | −3281.46 | −3263.30 | −3239.58 | −3267.17 | −3270.42 | −3218.68 |
Level 1 firms | 2238 | 2238 | 2215 | 2238 | 2238 | 2201 |
Level 2 countries | 32 | 32 | 31 | 32 | 32 | 31 |
LR test | 362.18*** | 106.29*** | 170.04*** | 146.71*** | 184.76*** | 125.65*** |
ICC | 0.239 | 0.078 | 0.114 | 0.100 | 0.126 | 0.103 |
(0.050) | (0.023) | (0.031) | (0.028) | (0.033) | (0.029) |