Since the 1960s, Korea has consistently expanded the investment in transport infrastructure in order to enhance the competitiveness of the national industry. Despite the input of a huge budget, however, studies conducted on the economic effect, particularly the spatial changes of economic activities, of the expressway construction, are almost nonexistent. In this regard, this study intends to analyze the impact of the transport infrastructure investment on the spatial distribution of economic activities through location changes of new manufacturing establishments. To that end, this study chooses the West Coast Expressway which was constructed with an objective to develop relatively underdeveloped regions, compared to those along the Seoul-Busan expressway. Based on the analysis, this study attempts to provide policy implications to help establish effective regional development policies and transport infrastructure plans.

This study selects the analysis period of a decade before and after 2001—when the West Coast Expressway was launched, and then links the micro data of the mining & manufacturing industries and the explanatory variables in terms of time-series at the spatial analysis unit, Eup, Myeon and Dong. Then, through applying a fixed-effects panel model, this study attempts to overcome limitations of the cross-sectional analysis, which can explain only the correlation, and clarify the causal relationship between the new expressway construction and the location of new manufacturing establishments.

Consequently, this study finds that the accessibility to existing expressways is still an important location factor for some new manufacturing establishments, but the launch of the West Coast Expressway has brought out very significant effects on the spatial distribution of new manufacturing establishments regardless of their technology level or size. This indicates that the expressway has a potential in playing the role of satisfying the construction objective of developing the underdeveloped regions. In addition, this study finds that average wages, average land prices, and agglomeration effects, are also significant determinants to the location decision of new manufacturing establishments. In particular, average wages do not significantly affect the location of a high-tech industry, but, for establishments with lower technology level, do seem to affect the location decision of manufacturing establishments more negatively. The average land price turns out to significantly affect the location decision of new manufacturing establishments regardless of their technology level or size.

The policy implications of this study are as follows. First, the investment on transport infrastructure such as the West Coast Expressway could be an effective tool for regional development, but without the agglomeration and sector clustering effects of existing businesses, the effect of new expressways would be only limited. Therefore, the government should give a sufficient consideration to the location of existing business activities and the planned industrial complex when it comes to setting the new express line and intersection locations. Second, the significant impact of the average land prices on attracting new manufacturing establishments is the testimony to the fact that the high prices of industrial lands would result in limited effects of new transport infrastructure, even if the large-scale investment is made on the transport infrastructure. This demonstrates how careful and cautious the government should be in setting the selling price of industrial lands.

발간사
요 약

제1장 서 론

제2장 교통인프라 현황 및 신규 제조업체의 공간적 분포
　제1절 교통인프라 현황
　제2절 신규 제조업체 현황
　제3절 신규 제조업체의 공간적 분포

제3장 선행연구 검토

제4장 실증분석
　제1절 분석모형
　제2절 자료 및 변수 설정
　제3절 실증분석 결과
　　1. 전체 신규 제조업체 입지요인 분석
　　2. 기술 수준별 신규 제조업체 입지요인 분석
　　3. 규모별 신규 제조업체 입지요인 분석

제5장 결론 및 정책적 시사점

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