High-speed Rail Network,Externality And Urban Economic Growth In China

The coordinated development of urban agglomerations depends not only on the spatial allocation of resources,but also on the interaction and function between cities,that is,the externality between cities.Based on the spatial dimension,externalities can be divided into agglomeration externalities and network externalities.This paper studies the impact of high-speed rail externalities on China’s urban economy under the background of rapid development of high-speed rail network.The particularity of the externality of high-speed rail lies in that its aggregation externality is club-like,and its network externality is sensitive to distance.Therefore,this paper first discusses the relationship between the agglomeration externalities of high-speed rail and network externalities;secondly,it measures the externalities of the impact of high-speed rail on urban economy by constructing the T-hour club market potential index;thirdly,it makes an empirical study on the effective scope of the high-speed rail economic circle in China’s high-speed rail network by using the instrumental variable method;lastly,according to the impact of HSR(high-speed rail)on the short-term passenger flow and long-term population flow(employment),I explore the reasons behind the effective scope of the HSR economic circle.The study finds that on the whole,the effective economic scale of cities in which HSR can exert externalities(agglomeration externalities and network externalities)is mainly in the range of 3-5 hours.On the one hand,the opening and operation of HSR has a significant positive impact on the total passenger volume and railway passenger volume,but has a significant negative impact on the passenger volume of civil aircraft,indicating that high-speed rail has played an important role in promoting short-term population flow.On the other hand,through the double difference method,it is found that the opening and operation of HSR has a certain role in promoting employment,but it is not obvious,and there is a lag effect.Therefore,this paper finds that the externalities of HSR play a role in urban economy mainly by promoting short-term passenger transport rather than long-term employment migration.The strongest distance of the externalities of high-speed rail is the four-hour running time of high-speed rail.