High-speed rail, economic agglomeration and urban innovation —— Analysis of Chinese evidence

ABSTRACT

By adjusting the spatial and temporal distance between small and medium-sized cities and provincial capital cities, high-speed rail has reshaped the distribution of innovation resources, and eventually significantly affected China’s economy. Employing data from 284 Chinese prefecture-level cities for the period of 2005 to 2015, this paper uses the propensity score matching model (PSM-DID) to analyze the relationship between the high-speed rail opening and urban innovation in China. Our empirical results show that: 1) the opening of high-speed rail significantly improves the overall level of urban innovation in China, but affected by “the distance from provincial capital” which present a “∽”-type structural feature 2) the mechanism of the effect of high-speed rail on urban innovation is mainly to promote economic agglomeration; and 3) the impact of high-speed rail opening on urban innovation has gradually declined characteristics based on opening time and regional economy heterogeneity.

KEYWORDS:

• High-speed rail
• urban innovation
• economic agglomeration
• economic density
• geographical distance

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shuang Pan

Shuang Pan, Doctor, Lecture of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics. His major filed of interest are urban innovation, Transportation Economic and corporate finance.

Hao-Nan Wang

Hao-nan Wang, Doctor, Lecture of Guangdong University of Finance. His major filed of interest are financial risk and macro-control, machine learning and capital market.

Yangda Li

Yangda Li is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow. He has earned a master’s degree in Project and Enterprises Management (with distinction) from UCL.His major research interests are strategy management, international business, andForeign trade of small and medium-sized enterprises

Li-Bo Chen

Libo Chen is a Ph.D. student in economics in University of Southampton. His major filed of interest are environmental economics, health economics and economic history.