The Impact of High-Speed Rail Opening on City Economics along the Silk Road Economic Belt

Feng Li, Yang Su, Jiaping Xie, Weijun Zhu and Yahua Wang
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Feng Li: School of Business Administration, Xinjiang University of Finance &Economics, Urumqi 830052, China
Yang Su: College of Economics and Trade, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi 830052, China
Jiaping Xie: School of Business Administration, Xinjiang University of Finance &Economics, Urumqi 830052, China
Weijun Zhu: School of international business administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Yahua Wang: School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: Achieving transport connectivity is a priority in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. In order to further understand the impact of railway infrastructure on city-level economic expansion, we set cities with high-speed rail as the treatment group and those without high-speed rail as the control group, and a difference-in-differences (DID) technique was used to estimate the growth impact and heterogeneity of high-speed rail opening on the economic growth of cities along the New Silk Road Economic Belt. The main results are as follows: First, economic growth in cities with operational high-speed rail lines was significantly higher than those without high-speed rail. Second, the impact of high-speed rail on economic growth exhibited distinct heterogeneity. Large cities tend to have a stronger siphoning effect, resulting in more pronounced impact of high-speed rail opening on urban economic growth. Third, cities with higher marketization levels and higher government efficiency were shown to have stronger economic growth effect.

Keywords: high-speed rail opening; the Silk Road Economic Belt; economic growth; heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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