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High-Speed Railway, Market Access, and Economic Growth

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  • Zou, Wei

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Chen, Liangheng

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Xiong, Junke

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

Abstract

We establish a general equilibrium trade model and adopt the “market access” approach to measure the impact of the high-speed railway (HSR) network on the economic growth of 110 of the main prefecture-level cities of the People’s Republic of China, for which we manually collect the pairwise travel distances and railway speeds to calculate market access. The empirical results show that the launch of the HSR exerts significant positive effects on growth. Specifically, a 1% increase in market access leads to an increase in real income of 0.123% (controlling the region fixed effect) or 0.121% (controlling the province fixed effect). Counterfactual econometric analysis indicates that, if all the HSR were removed in 2015, the market access would fall by an average of 76.2% and the aggregate real income would decline by up to 9.4%. The growth effect of the HSR varies across cities, and the HSR has a more prominent impact on services than on manufacturing. The conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Zou, Wei & Chen, Liangheng & Xiong, Junke, 2018. "High-Speed Railway, Market Access, and Economic Growth," ADBI Working Papers 852, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0852
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    Cited by:

    1. Shanlang Lin & Prithvi Raj Dhakal & Zhaowei Wu, 2021. "The Impact of High-Speed Railway on China’s Regional Economic Growth Based on the Perspective of Regional Heterogeneity of Quality of Place," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-24, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    high-speed railway; transport infrastructure; market access; economic growth; PRC;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R42 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government and Private Investment Analysis; Road Maintenance; Transportation Planning

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