The Impact Of High Speed Rail On Urban Economy Along The Line

At present,the continuous expansion of high-speed railway mileage in our country has a tremendous impact on the economic and social development of cities along the high-speed railway.The high-speed railway strategy is a major national strategy of our country.The Shanghai-Kunming High Speed Railway is the one of the most important passage of “eight vertical and eight horizontal” which has through Shanghai,Hangzhou,Nanchang,Changsha,Guiyang,Kunming.Shanghai-Kunming High Speed Railway has a extremely special geographical location,which across the three major regions of East China,Central China and Western China,connecting the less developed central and western regions with the developed East region.With the advancing of the construction of China's Yangtze River economic belt and the construction of the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed rail economic belt,Shanghai-Kunming High Speed Railway has an increasingly widening impact on the region along the line.Does high-speed rail promote economic growth,economic structure adjustment and change the income gap between urban and rural areas?Taking the area along the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway as an example,based on the data of prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2016,this paper uses the difference in difference estimation model(DID)to analyze the impacts of high speed railway on regional economic growth,economic development quality,urban-rural income gap.The results show that high-speed rail has a significant impact on economic growth,economic restructuring and urban-rural income disparity in the areas along the line,but there are some differences in the impact on areas with different development levels.In terms of the impact of high-speed railway on regional economic growth,HSR has promoted the growth of regional economy and the promotion effect of HSR on the economic growth of the less-developed central regions along the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed rail line>the underdeveloped western regions>the developed eastern regions.In terms of the impact of high-speed railways on the quality of economic development,in the developed eastern regions along the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed rail line,high-speed railways have promoted the increase in the proportion of the tertiary industry and helped to enhance the quality of economic development.In the underdeveloped central and western regions,high-speed rail is negatively correlated with the increase of the proportion of the tertiary industry.In terms of the impact of high-speed rail to urban-rural income disparity,in the developed areas,the high-speed rail has widened the income gap between urban and rural areas;while in less-developed areas,the high-speed rail narrowed the income gap between urban and rural areas.And at last,this article has analyzed the influences of economic growth,economic structure adjustment,urban-rural income gap,and gave some relevant policy recommendations accordingly.