Abstract: By making use of the non-paramatric Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index, this paper measures and decomposes the TFP of China’s railway transportation industry from 1997 to 2009, it also conducts an absolute convergence test of the productivity of the regional railway transportation industry. The findings show that the smooth and fast technical progress is the main reason for the TFP growth of China’s railway transportation industry during that period; the decrease of the input-output mixed efficiency is the important factor for the decrease of the TFPE in some regions; and there exists significant convergence in the statistics of productivity in the industry of nationwide and the three bigger regions. Moreover, by applying the panel data econometric model, this paper performs an empirical test of the relative effect of such factors as structural changes, capital deepening, derived demand, etc. on the TFP of the railway transportation, technical progress and efficiency changes. The findings also show that there exist significant positive and negative correlations between the industrial economic structure and the productivity of railway transportation and between the internal structure of railway transportation and the productivity; the degree of capital deepening shows a significant negative influence; all kinds of derived demands and the railway network density show a significant positive influence; the proportion of state-owned railways and other substitutive competitive factors as highway facilities have presented some negative influences of different degrees.

Key words: technical progress; structural change; railway transportation industry; Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index