Abstract: Taking regional airports of Jiangsu Provence as instance, co-integration and Granger causality between airport passenger throughput and local GDP in southern and northern districts of Jiangsu Province are analyzed in order to investigate the interrelation between regional airports and local economic growth from the macroscopic perspective. It is found that there exists stable and long period relation between the two variables. Contrastive study proves that the economic growth in southern Jiangsu can obviously promote the development of regional aviation,while the air transportation in northern Jiangsu has greater impact on local economy. For southern Jiangsu province, local GDP is the Granger cause of airport throughput, but not vice versa. While for northern Jiangsu province, the situation is just the opposite. The above conclusion could provide reference for local government to make scientific regional aviation developing policy.

Key words: regional airport, regional economy, co-integration analysis, Granger causality analysis