High Speed Railway,Market Access And Economic Development

In recent years,the global high-speed railway has experienced rapid development,especially the development of China’s high-speed railway.The access of high-speed railways has gradually changed the absolute or relative levels of market accessibility in different cities,thereby increasing mobility opportunities and enabling merchants and tourists to reach farther places more quickly.In other words,the high-speed railway is reshaping people’s production and lifestyle.Therefore,it is necessary to systematically explore the economic development effects of high-speed railway.Firstly,this paper systematically combed the research literature on transportation infrastructure and economic development to determine the frontier and necessity of the research topic and method.Then,the effect of high-speed railway on economic growth and its internal mechanism are explored.By establishing a general equilibrium trade model,the effect of high-speed railway on the economic growth of 110prefecture-level cities is measured by the market access approach.In the estimation process,the operation time matrix of ordinary railways and high-speed railways between these 110 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2015 are collected manually,and used to calculate the transportation cost matrix and market access matrix of 110prefecture-level cities over the years.The empirical results show that the launch of HSR exhibits significant positive effects on growth,specifically,1 percentage increase in MA leads to an increase of real income by 0.123(controlling region fixed effect)or 0.121(controlling province fixed effect)percentage.The conclusion stands valid after a series of robustness tests.The counterfactual measurement method is used to calculate the aggregate and distribution effects of high-speed railways on economic development,and it is found that if all HSR were removed in 2015,the market access would fall by an average of 76.2%,and aggregate real income would decline by up to 9.4%.However,the distribution effect of high-speed railways is not uniform in different regions.In addition,the effects of high-speed railway on the secondary industry and tertiary industry are investigated,which proves that high-speed railway is more sensitive to the tertiary industry.Next,this paper explore the effect of high-speed railway on the spatial distribution of firm productivity and its internal mechanism from a micro perspective.By establishing the multi-sector model of heterogeneous firms,it is deduced that high-speed railway has an effect on firm productivity distribution through consumer market access and firm market access.The study finds that consumer market access promotes the rise of local average productivity;while firm market access hinders the rise of local average productivity.At the same time,there is a positive correlation between the firm market access and the output of the firm under the control of individual firm productivity,and those with lower productivity increase more among the surviving firms.This paper also finds that the increase of consumer market access or the decrease of firm market access are more likely to promote the exit of low-productivity firms and hinder the entry of new firms.In addition,the market access caused by high-speed railway has an important effect on firm productivity,in which consumer market access promotes the improvement of firm productivity,while firm market access has a negative effect on firm productivity.Again,this paper further examines the effect of high-speed railway on regional heterogeneity,and finds that the effect on the central region is the largest,followed by the eastern region,and the western region is the smallest.The research on industry heterogeneity shows that the influence of technology and capital-intensive industries is greater,while that of labor-intensive industries is the least.Finally,considering the influence of the special event of financial crisis,this paper explores the phenomenon of divergence between economic growth and productivity,and finds that the reason for the divergence is that the firm market access caused by high-speed railway is superior to the consumer market access.Finally,this paper examines the effect of political influence on local economic growth from the perspective of high-speed railway.The study finds that for every 1%increase in political access,market access increased by 0.39% in various regions;At the same time,for every 1% increase in market access,the actual GDP level increased by 0.124%(controlling region)or 0.123%(controlling provincial level).The research of mediating effect shows that the political access mainly promotes the local economic growth by the intermediary role of market access in the whole sample.Compared with big cities,small cities are more affected by political influence,and the direct effect of political influence on the economic growth of small cities is more obvious than the indirect effect caused by market access.