Shuo Chen, Xiaobo He, Applied Economics Letters, Road to success? The effects of road toll on economic growth in China

This article examines the effects of road tolls on economic growth in China. Using a provincial panel data and pool mean group method, we find that a 1% rise in road tolls leads to 0.005% and 0.03% reduction in GDP growth and GDP per capita, respectively. Moreover, it shows that although more road tolls may contribute to financing local transportation networks, they hinder inter-regional trade thus result in more serious market segmentation.

Keywords: toll roads; economic growth; pool mean group method;China