A Study On The Impact Of The Opening Of High-speed Rail On Regional Economic Disparities

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has grown rapidly,creating a miracle that belongs to China in the history of world economic development.In the process of economic development,the improvement of transportation infrastructure has provided tremendous impetus for economic development,as well as convenient conditions for division of labor,cooperation and exchanges in various regions.The construction and opening of high-speed rail accelerated this process,which gradually reduced the gap between regions,accelerated the integration of people in various regions,and weakened the negative impact of administrative boundaries on regional cooperation.However,with the development of China’s economy,the gap between regions has become wider and wider.As pointed out in the report of the Nineteenth National Congress,the main contradiction of our society has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development.The unbalanced problem between regions needs the attention and exploration of the economic circles.Reasons for the gap between regions.Although the construction of high-speed rail will strengthen the division of labor and cooperation among regions,the contraction of some cities in the construction of high-speed rail may further widen the gap between regions.Therefore,the study of the impact of high-speed rail construction on regional disparities not only helps to understand the causes of regional imbalances,but also may find new ways to slow down the widening of regional disparities or even narrow regional disparities.This paper studies the gap between regions from the perspective of transport infrastructure,and analyses the impact of high-speed rail on the gap between regions.Firstly,this paper analyses the impact of high-speed rail on regional disparities in general,and points out whether the high-speed rail has a sustained impact on regional disparities after its opening.Secondly,from the perspective of shrinking cities,this paper analyses whether shrinking cities will accelerate the populationoutflow after opening high-speed rail,which will reduce the economic vitality of shrinking cities,thus widening the gap with other regions,and further analyses whether high-speed rail will be opened in shrinking cities or not.It plays a part of the intermediary role and whether there is a sustained impact.Then,considering the great difference of development level among regions,this paper makes a heterogeneous analysis of the effect of high-speed rail opening in different regions,to explore whether different regions have different effects on regional disparity.The last part is the robustness analysis,because the cities opening high-speed rail are not randomly selected,but are planned by the state.Because of their economic and political advantages and higher traffic demand,large cities are more likely to open high-speed rail,and the deviation of sample selection may cause endogenous problems.In order to solve this problem,this paper adopts two ways: one is using PSM-DID method,which has been proved to be effective in alleviating endogenous problems caused by sample selection bias.The second is to delete the sample data of first-tier cities and provincial capitals for regression,to observe that the conclusions will be inconsistent with the benchmark analysis.On the basis of the above research ideas,this paper conducts an empirical study and finds the following conclusions:(1)The opening of high-speed rail will narrow the regional disparity,and will continue to narrow the regional disparity in the short term.This may be due to the fact that the opening of high-speed rail is conducive to the free flow of factors.The opening of high-speed rail has greatly accelerated the flow of labor factors among regions,and facilitated the communication and spillover of effects between regions.As a result,outflow areas may slow down GDP growth,but may lead to faster per capita output and income growth.(2)For shrinking cities,the opening of high-speed rail will also narrow the gap between Shrinking Cities and other cities.But for shrinking cities,the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on regional disparity is not significant in the early stage.The results of the intermediate mechanism test show that the opening of high-speed rail in shrinking cities will accelerate the population outflow in the current period,and then turn to the population return.This may be the reason why the regional disparity has been narrowing gradually after the opening of high-speed rail inshrinking cities.(3)The analysis of regional heterogeneity shows that the opening of high-speed rail will narrow the regional gap for the cities in the eastern region,but not for the cities in the central region,while for the cities in the western region,the opening of high-speed rail will increase the gap with other cities.And the differential effects of high-speed rail have a sustained effect,but with the passage of time,the narrowing and expanding differential effects will gradually narrow,until gradually disappear.(4)The PSM-DID method and the idea of deleting the samples of first-tier cities and provincial capitals have been used to study the results.Compared with the benchmark results,the results of the two methods are not inconsistent.Although the impact coefficient of the opening of high-speed rail on regional disparities is smaller,they are still significant.This indicates that the benchmark regression results of DID may partly exaggerate the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on regional disparities,but the impact direction of the opening of high-speed rail on regional disparities is still robust and reliable.According to the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: First,further improvement of the high-speed rail network may be one of the ways to narrow regional disparities and alleviate regional imbalances.Further improvement of the high-speed rail network will further enhance the spillover effect of economically developed cities,so that the national strategy of bringing wealth first and then wealth can really be realized.Second,we should further liberalize the restrictions on population mobility.The analysis of the intermediate mechanism of this paper finds that the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on regional disparity is partly achieved through population mobility.Therefore,further abolishing the institutional barriers to population mobility will enable the population to move freely,and further improve the matching degree between population and region and work,which will be conducive to the further development of regional economy and the balanced development between regions.Thirdly,there are great differences in economic development among the eastern,central and Western regions,which makes the impact of high-speed rail on different regions different.The disadvantage of high-speed rail in the central and western regions may be due tofewer lines and no scale effect,this needs further study.