Study On The Impact Of High-Speed Rail On The Economic Gap Within Urban Agglomerations

The new economic geography believes that the improvement of transportation infrastructure will not only accelerate the spatial flow and transfer of economic factors,but also have a positive impact on regional economic growth.High-speed railway has the characteristics of fast speed,safety and comfort.As a new type of transportation infrastructure,it has strong attraction and economic vitality.China’s high-speed rail has been developing rapidly since 2003,the state put forward four horizontal been special railway line planning,further put forward eight vertical eight horizontal railway network,proves the importance for high-speed rail,scholars also reseach the development of the high-speed economic development and urban scale on the whole,it finds that the impact of the high-speed rail for economic growth is a boost,but the heterogeneity is exist because the influence on different economic region and industry is different.The opening of high-speed railway not only significantly affects economic growth,but also affects the time accessibility between cities,the flow efficiency and agglomeration effect of production factors,urban population,industrial structure and spatial pattern,and further influences the balanced development of regional economy.The study on the economic effect of high-speed railway based on the level of urban agglomeration is conducive to the understanding of the balance effect of high-speed railway on regional economy.Based on the above analysis,this paper explores the impact of high-speed railway on the economic gap within urban agglomeration.Firstly,the basic concepts of urban agglomeration and regional economy as well as the basic theories of regional economy are introduced,and it is believed that high-speed railway has a differential impact on the economy of different cities by affecting the urban population and industrial structure.Secondly,in the empirical part,this paper uses the high-speed railway data from 2004 to 2013 and urban agglomeration panel data,and takes the opening of high-speed railway as a quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of the opening of high-speed railway on the economic gap within urban agglomeration.In addition,the coverage of high-speed railway network is different,and the number of stations in cities in urban agglomeration is different,which may have different influences on the economic gap of cities in urban agglomeration.Therefore,in this paper,the number of high-speed railway stations within urban agglomerations is taken as the independent variable to verify whether the complexity of high-speed railway network has an impact on the economy of urban agglomerations.Once again,regarding the endogenous solution of high-speed railway opening and economy,we selected the longitude and latitude of urban agglomeration and the opening lead time of high-speed railway as instrumental variables for regression,so as to make our research conclusion more credible.In this paper,the mediating test was used to test the influence mechanism,and the regression was carried out after the exclusion of three megacities,so as to remove the research influence caused by the big difference of research objects.Finally,the high-speed railway is opened in advance to carry out counterfactual test to increase the credibility of this paper.Based on the above theory and empirical research,the following conclusions are obtained.First of all,the high-speed opening significantly narrow the gap between the urban agglomeration within urban economy,balance,to promote the development of urban agglomeration economy to promote the coordinated development of urban agglomerations,and interaction with the population,per capita GDP shows that highspeed rail will be through the expanding urban population gap and imbalance with per capita GDP increase cities,but enhanced by high iron industry agglomeration effect,will promote the regional harmonious development.Finally,this paper puts forward relevant Suggestions on the basis of the research.There is no doubt about the impact of high-speed rail on cities.Therefore,city governments should increase the construction of high-speed rail.