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

Abstract

Achieving transport connectivity is a priority in China's "Belt and Road Initiative". In order to further understand the impact of railway infrastructure on city-level economic expansion, we set cities with high-speed rail as the treatment group and those without high-speed rail as the control group, and a difference-in-differences (DID) technique was used to estimate the growth impact and heterogeneity of high-speed rail opening on the economic growth of cities along the New Silk Road Economic Belt. The main results are as follows: First, economic growth in cities with operational high-speed rail lines was significantly higher than those without high-speed rail. Second, the impact of high-speed rail on economic growth exhibited distinct heterogeneity. Large cities tend to have a stronger siphoning effect, resulting in more pronounced impact of high-speed rail opening on urban economic growth. Third, cities with higher marketization levels and higher government efficiency were shown to have stronger economic growth effect.

The Impact of High-Speed Railway on China’s Regional Economic Growth Based on the Perspective of Regional Heterogeneity of Quality of Place

“…The empirical analysis of the study identified that the HSR launch tends to influence economic growth significantly. Researchers have also investigated the influence of the HSR on economic growth, and it was identified that large cities tend to have a significant influence that increases economic growth significantly [35]. The findings of this study are supported by a study that also found that the opening of the HSR tends to impact economic growth significantly, and, in this way, the study findings are strongly supported [22].…”

“…High-speed railways may improve urban development conditions, enhance the connection between the city and a more comprehensive range of markets, industrial chains and increase the market for companies along the route. High-speed rail can promote the free flow of labor, attract corporate headquarters to gather along the highspeed rail, and promote the simultaneous development of regional economic integration and industrial agglomeration [35]. A detailed literature review on the agglomeration impact of transport investment concluded that public transport improvement could bring considerable external benefits by promoting an agglomeration economy [36].…”

“…The high-speed railway's opening improves the connectivity between two places, promotes the connection between the cities along the line, and enlarges the "siphon effect" of central cities on peripheral cities [35]. The agglomeration of these cities has a siphonic effect on peripheral cities, which negatively affects their corporate productivity.…”

The formation mechanism of external effects of improving transport accessibility caused by high-speed rail devepolment

“…Крупные города, подключенные к системе ВСМ, демонстрируют тенденцию к аккумулированию ресурсов из меньших городов, что усиливает их экономическое развитие. Однако, средние и небольшие города в большей степени чувствительны к изменению заработной платы, вызванной транспортной доступностью, нежели крупные [8].…”

Towards Sustainable Cities: Utilizing Floating Car Data to Support Location-Based Road Network Performance Measurements

“…These indicators often contain terms such as "mobility" [6], "efficient transportation", or "transportation and roads" [7]. When dealing with the sustainability of transportation and the efficient movement of people and goods, in addition to topics such as railways [8] and public transportation [9][10][11][12][13], the urban road network is a major research area [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. This stems from the fact that road network performance (RNP) can lead to significant negative impacts on all three dimensions of urban sustainability.…”