The Opening of High-Speed Railway and Coordinated Development of the Core–Periphery Urban Economy in China

Jiaqi Li, Ehsan Elahi (), Cheng Peng, Aimin Wu, Fengtong Cao, Jian Wang, Mohammad Ilyas Abro and Zainab Khalid
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Jiaqi Li: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Ehsan Elahi: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Cheng Peng: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Aimin Wu: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Fengtong Cao: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Jian Wang: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology (SDUT), Zibo 255049, China
Mohammad Ilyas Abro: Department of Basic Sciences and Humanities, Dawood University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi 74800, Pakistan
Zainab Khalid: School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: The current study investigates the impact of the high-speed railway’s operation on the coordinated economic development of “core–periphery” cities using the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model. Data on 270 prefecture-level cities in China were collected for empirical analysis of collected data. The findings demonstrate that the high-speed railway’s operation has widened the economic development gap between core and peripheral cities and restrained the coordinated growth of the urban economy. The heterogeneity analysis found that the “siphon effect” of the high-speed railway’s operation in core cities is only effective within the distance of “one-hour metropolitan area”. Moreover, it is found that the high-speed railway has a threshold effect based on the size of cities. It depicts that the core cities in the high-speed railway network play a “siphon effect” and “diffusion effect” on large size cities and small (or medium) size cities, respectively, which is manifested as a suppression and promotion effect on the coordinated development of the urban economy. Furthermore, it is found that that technological innovation and economic agglomeration are two significant intermediary paths of high-speed railway opening that affect the level of “core–periphery” city economics coordination; however, technological innovation’s role as an intermediary has a stronger masking effect than economic agglomeration.

Keywords: high-speed railway; core–periphery; urban economy; mediating effect; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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