High-speed Railway Construction And County Economic Growth

As a frontier of reform and opening up,Guangdong Province has long faced the problem of regional imbalances and constrained its economic growth.To this end,Guangdong Province is taking the construction of transportation infrastructure such as high-speed railway as the starting point,promoting the system of joint construction and counterpart assistance in the Pearl River Delta region or the non-Delta region,speeding up the development of the non-Delta region and promoting regional coordinated development.With the rapid development of high-speed railways,more and more counties have been included in the layout of site construction.The rapid development of high-speed rail is of great benefit to big cities,but the impact on the county economy along the way is not known.In the end,will the construction of high-speed railways promote county economic growth,or will it absorb the production factors of the county,restrain its economic growth and aggravate regional development imbalance? Focusing on this issue,this paper will empirically analyze the impact of high-speed railway construction on county economic growth from the perspective of county,from the four aspects of GDP,secondary industry added value,tertiary industry added value and fixed asset investment.Firstly,this paper uses the panel data of 57 counties in Guangdong Province from 2005 to 2016 as a research sample to construct a multi-period DID model.The study found that,(1)from the sample range of all counties,high-speed rail construction will inhibit the total GDP of the county and The increase in the added value of the tertiary industry,but can promote the growth of the added value of the secondary industry,has no significant impact on fixed asset investment.(2)Divide the samples of all counties into county-level cities and counties to discuss.The economic impact of high-speed rail construction on the two is generally consistent with the whole sample.The high-speed rail opening has the most significant impact on the county's economic growth,followed by all counties.The county-level city is the smallest.(3)Compared with the Pearl River Delta region,the impact of high-speed rail construction on the economic growth of the non-Pearl River Delta county is more significant,which will curb the total GDP of the county,the added value of the tertiary industry and the growth of fixed-asset investment,but at the same time it will also affect the secondary industry.The added value has a positive effect.Secondly,from the perspective of a single county,this paper deeply analyzes the impact of high-speed railway construction on county economic growth.Based on the synthetic control method,this paper takes Yunan County along Nanguang as the treatment group,and constructs the “anti-factual” state of Yunan County through the data characteristics of the control group,thus estimating the impact of the construction of the Nanguang high-speed railway on the economic growth of Yunan County.The results show that:(1)The synthetic control method can well fit the change path of the GDP and the added value of the secondary industry in Yunan County before the construction of the Nanguang high-speed railway,but the third-industry added value and fixed-asset investment have a poor fitting effect.(2)According to the estimation results,the average impacts of the construction of Nanguang high-speed railway on the total GDP,the added value of the secondary industry,the added value of the tertiary industry and the investment in fixed assets of Yunan County are-0.160,-0.312,-0.157 and-0.020.It can be considered that the construction of the Nanguang high-speed railway has produced a siphon effect,which has restrained the economic growth of Yunan County.(3)The economic effects of Nanguang high-speed railway have certain pre-efficiency effects.Since 2008,the impact effect has become more and more significant,and then the investment utility has weakened,and the impact effect has declined,but it has remained relatively stable.