High‐speed railway to success? The effects of high‐speed rail connection on regional economic development in China

Abstract

We find that high-speed railway connection in China has led to a reduction in GDP per capita for connected peripheral prefectures. We use the least-cost path-spanning tree network to address the nonrandom route placement issue.We find that the reduction of GDP per capita is driven by significant contractions in capital input, industrial output, and skilled labor outflow. We present evidence to support a trade-based channel in light of falling transportation costs between peripheral and metropolitan regions. Our finding highlights the importance of the cost of human transport. K E Y W O R D S core-periphery, GDP per capita reduction, high-speed railway, least-cost path J E L C O D E S F12, F15, O18, R12

The Impact of High-Speed Rail Opening on City Economics along the Silk Road Economic Belt

“…Another view states that this driving effect is ambiguous, which can promote economic aggregate significantly in the short term but has less effect on economic growth [9]. This is mainly due to the fact that the impact of high-speed rail on regional economic growth hinges on factors such as network layout, construction cost, and environmental cost [10][11][12][13].…”

Travel costs, trade, and market segmentation: Evidence from China's high‐speed railway

“…Most papers, which focus on HSR projects in Japan, Europe and China, evaluate their effects on local economic development, such as GDP and employment growth (Atack, Bateman, Haines, & Margo, 2010; Banerjee, Duflo, & Qian, 2012; Chandra & Thompson, 2000; Duranton & Turner, 2012; Fernald, 1999; Ke, Chen, Hong, & Hsiao, 2017), city's external economic linkages (Ahlfeldt & Feddersen, 2010; Bernard, Moxnes, & Saito, 2019; Wang & Wu, 2015), real‐estate prices (Zheng & Kahn, 2013), knowledge diffusion and idea spillover (Dong, Zheng, & Kahn, 2020), and intercity passenger traffic and employment in industries (Cheng, Loo, & Vickerman, 2015; Dong, 2018; Lin, 2017). Meanwhile, some studies find a negative spillover effect from HSR connection on peripheral counties along upgraded railway lines (Qin, 2017; Yu, Lin, Tang, & Zhong, 2019). Our paper adds to this literature by examining the impact of HSR on inter‐regional economic interactions and domestic market integration.…”

On the modal shift from motorway to high-speed rail: evidence from Italy

“…One reason for this is that the decision was taken to build a large part of the HSR network next to highways so as to prevent further land consumption (Beria et al, 2018). Thus, when the route plan is based primarily on geographical factors (e.g., topography and geomorphology) so as to minimize construction costs, the possible endogeneity caused by the non-random location is significantly reduced (Faber, 2014;Yu et al, 2018).…”

“…The spread of the railroads has, historically, been one of the main determinants of the urbanization and economic growth of many countries, including the United States (Donaldson and Hornbeck, 2016), India (Donaldson, 2018), Sweden (Berger and Enflo, 2017), Switzerland (Büchel and Kyburz, 2018), and, more recently, China (Diao, 2018;Yu et al, 2018). In its efforts to achieve better social inclusion, cohesion and accessibility, the development of high-speed rail (HSR) has been one of the central features of the European Union's recent transport infrastructure policy (Vickerman, 1997).…”