How Does Improved Investment Access Inspire Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Infrastructure Construction in China

Tianshi Sun, Xiuyan Liu and Mingyue Wang

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2025, vol. 61, issue 11, 3382-3405

Abstract: The rapid development of infrastructure construction has profoundly affected the flow and allocation of production factors, exerting a significant influence on regional economic patterns. Existing research does not support the assertion that high-speed railways activate regional entrepreneurial vitality from an investment—access perspective. Based on the cross-regional investment data of listed companies in 270 Chinese cities, firm registration data, and China’s high-speed rail (HSR) network data from 2004 to 2022, we examined how improved investment access promotes entrepreneurial vitality. These findings suggest that the development of high-speed rail networks encouraged listed companies to expand their cross-regional investment portfolios and improved investment access to cities, which, in turn, increased the number of startups. The conclusions remain unchanged after using the instrumental variables and a series of robustness tests. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that cities with similar cultural backgrounds were more favorable for expanding cross-regional investments when HSR networks improve. Simultaneously, for regions with low initial entrepreneurial vitality, improving investment accessibility was more conducive to increasing entrepreneurial vitality. This study provides new ideas for activating entrepreneurial vitality from an investment access perspective and provides empirical evidence that transportation infrastructure enhances entrepreneurship.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2025.2480163 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:emfitr:v:61:y:2025:i:11:p:3382-3405

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2025.2480163

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().