High-speed rail, market access, and the rise of consumer cities: Evidence from China

Longfei Zheng, Zheng Chang and Andrea González Martinez

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2022, vol. 165, issue C, 454-470

Abstract: This study examines the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on the formation of consumer cities in China. We employ the market access (MA) approach and construct the least-cost path spanning tree network as an instrument to estimate the causal impact of HSR development on the socio-economic changes of counties from 2007 to 2016. Through a set of instrumental variable regressions, we find that districts with high MA growth experienced service sector agglomeration, manufacturing sector decentralization, and land price appreciation. These effects are relatively large for the urban districts of first- and second-tier Chinese cities. Through counterfactual analysis, we find that the absence of an HSR network decreases the growth of the number of service firms and service land price by 6.11% and 52.2%, respectively. These results suggest that HSR plays a key role in the rise of consumer cities by improving market access/integration, which transfers the economic structure from production to consumption.

Keywords: High-speed rail; Market access; Agglomeration; Land value; Least-cost path spanning tree; Consumer city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R41 R42 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2022.08.012

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