Infrastructure Connectivity and Enterprise Performance: Quasi-natural Experiment based on China Railway Express

Abstract

The Belt and Road initiatives (BRI) has promoted the trade exchanges between China and the countries along the route. The opening of the CHINA RAILWAY Express (CR express), its core achievement, has promoted the infrastructure connection between China and other countries, and has a profound impact on the development of Chinese enterprises. Under the profound adjustment of the current international investment and trade pattern and the rules of multilateral investment and trade, it is of great practical significance and theoretical value to study the impact of the opening of CR express on enterprise performance. Based on the micro data of 8,770 A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2009 to 2015, this paper constructs Differences-in-Differences model (DID) to investigate the impact of the launch of CR express on enterprise performance. The study found that the opening of CR expresses significantly improved enterprises performance. Moreover, with the increase of the distance between the spokes, the promoting effect is gradually weakened. This paper reveals the promotion and influencing mechanism of the opening of CR express on enterprise performance, which has some enlightening effect on the further research of CR express station planning and other issues.