Roads, railroads and decentralization of Chinese cities

Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Loren Brandt (), J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew Turner and Qinghua Zhang

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We investigate how configurations of urban railroads and highways influenced urban form in Chinese cities since 1990. Each radial highway displaces about 4 percent of central city population to surrounding regions and ring roads displace about an additional 20 percent, with stronger effects in the richer coastal and central regions. Each radial railroad reduces central city industrial GDP by about 20 percent, with ring roads displacing an additional 50 percent. Similar estimates for the locations of manufacturing jobs and residential location of manufacturing workers is evidence that radial highways decentralize service sector activity, radial railroads decentralize industrial activity and ring roads decentralize both. Historical transportation infrastructure provides identifying variation in more recent measures of infrastructure.

Keywords: China; roads; railroads; infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O2 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-tre and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (185)

Published in Review of Economics and Statistics, 17, July, 2017, 99(3), pp. 435-448. ISSN: 0034-6535

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Related works:
Journal Article: Roads, Railroads, and Decentralization of Chinese Cities (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:67374

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