Analysis Of The Impact Of High Speed Rail On The Economic Growth Of Small And Medium Cities Along The Line

On August 1st,2008,the opening of the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour marked the official entry of China into the era of high-speed rail.The high-speed rail has a siphon effect on the production factors such as labor and capital in small and medium-sized cities while promoting regional economic development.Therefore,academics generally believe that high-speed rail will promote the economic development of large cities and small cities will be suppressed,which further exacerbates interregional Unbalanced development(Puga,2008).In today's large-scale construction of high-speed rail in small and medium-sized cities,it is urgent to study the impact of high-speed rail on its economic growth.This article focuses on the economic impact of the opening of high-speed rail on small and medium-sized cities along the line,focusing on three questions: Does the opening of high-speed rail have an impact on the economy of small and medium-sized cities? Does the impact manifest as a promotion or inhibition? What are the factors that affect the difference?In order to solve the above problems,this article first made innovations in research methods.Specifically: Based on the idea of constructing "counterfact" inference proposed by Hsiao et al.,Using structural equation modeling(SEM),the first empirical confirmation of the existence of "public factors" driving economic growth in different cities,And estimate the size of this "public factor";by introducing dummy variables that characterize policy effects,and using their significance in the model as a criterion,select cities that are not affected by high-speed rail as the control group cities.For the first time,empirical The method has dealt with the difficult problem that the members of the control group may be affected by the policy.In the specific research,the three small and medium-sized cities along the line of the high-speed rail that were opened earlier and are geographically representative were selected as the experimental group,and the cities in the same or adjacent provinces that were not affected by the high-speed rail policy effect were selected as the control group.It analyzes the policy effect of high-speed rail policy on the per capita GDP and GDP growth rate of the cities in the experimental group,and analyzes the reasons for the difference in the impact of high-speed rail through panel data regression.Through empirical analysis and qualitative analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)The policy effect of high-speed rail on the per capita GDP of small and medium-sized cities is not certain.It has both a promotion effect,a suppression effect and a policy effect that is not significant.(2)The opening of high-speed rail has no significant impact on the GDP growth rate of small and medium-sized cities along the line.Even the policy effect of the GDP growth rate of some of the experimental group cities(Baoji and Weinan)of the Zhengxi High Speed Rail is negative.(3)Due to different geographical conditions and resource endowments of small and medium-sized cities,the impact of the same high-speed rail line on the economic growth of different cities is different.(4)Even in the same city,the impact of high-speed rail on GDP per capita and GDP growth rate are also different.(5)High-speed rail has a positive effect on the economic growth of mature resource cities,and industrial factors account for the largest proportion of many factors that lead to differences in policy effects.It will face the risk of the outflow of human resources and other factors,thereby inhibiting the increase in local GDP per capita.