 Travel costs and urban specialization patterns: Evidence from China’s high speed railway systemJournal of Urban Economics, 2017, vol. 98, issue C, 98-123 Abstract: How does intercity passenger transportation shape urban employment and specialization patterns? To shed light on this question I study China’s High Speed Railway (HSR), an unprecedentedly large-scale network that connected 81 cities from 2003 to 2014 with trains running at speeds over 200 km/h. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that an HSR connection increases city-wide passenger flows by 10% and employment by 7%. To deal with the issues of endogenous railway placement and simultaneous public investments accompanying HSR connection, I examine the impact of a city’s market access changes purely driven by the HSR connection of other cities. The estimates suggest that HSR-induced expansion in market access increases urban employment with an elasticity between 2 and 2.5. Further evidence on sectoral employment suggests that industries with a higher reliance on nonroutine cognitive skills benefit more from HSR-induced market access to other cities. Keywords: Transportation infrastructure; High speed railway; Urban employment and specialization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:98:y:2017:i:c:p:98-123 DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2016.11.002 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Urban Economics is currently edited by S.S. Rosenthal and W.C. Strange More articles in Journal of Urban Economics from Elsevier |
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