The Impact Of High-speed Railway On Regional Economic Growth

Since the 21st century,China has carried out unprecedented high-speed railway construction.As a revolutionary vehicle,high-speed railway has developed very rapidly in our country,which not only changed the pattern of transportation,but also had an impact on regional economic growth.By the end of 2018,the length of high-speed railways in service has reached 29,000 kilometers in China,more than 2/3 of the world’s total.With the full development of the “Eight Longitudinal Eight Horizontal” high-speed railway network,China has entered the era of high-speed train.As a fast and efficient way of transportation,high-speed railway not only promotes the flow of people and logistics,as well as industrial structure’s adjustment,it also has an important impact on the regional economy along the line,and,the mechanism and degree of effect need to be further studied in this paper.This paper takes the high-speed railway in the Yangtze River Delta as the research object.Firstly,it collects the relevant domestic and foreign literature and combs the related theories,based on the economic growth theory,the location theory,the core-edge theory,the growth pole theory and the “point-axle” development theory,the new economic geography theory.Secondly,it analyzes the effect mechanism of high-speed railway on regional economic growth.This paper mainly focuses on the impact of high-speed railway on regional economy by increasing investment,stimulating knowledge element spillover,promoting labor agglomeration and optimizing of industrial structure.After analyzing the high-speed railway’s construction and operation,policy guidance,government investment,employment status,innovation ability and the general situation of industrial structure in the Yangtze River Delta region.This paper concludes that the developed economy and dense transportation network make the Yangtze River Delta region have comparative advantages in the whole country,it could play an important reference role of economic growth for the other areas.Based on the quasi-natural experiment of high-speed railway construction in China,this paper selects the panel data of 41 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Delta region from the year of 2006 to 2017,and uses difference-in-difference model to inspect the influence of high-speed railway on urban economic growth,and also carries on the intermediary effect test: from four aspects including fixed assets investment,stimulating knowledge element spillover,labor force agglomeration and industrial structure optimization,we examine the effect mechanism of high-speed railway on economic growth.Through theoretical and empirical analysis,the conclusions of this paper mainly include the following items:(1)High-speed railway has a promoting effect on regional economic growth,and the effect of high-speed railway has gradually increased within two years after its opening,and began to decline after the third year;(2)The opening of high-speed railway can promote economic growth by influencing investment;the opening of high-speed railway can promote economic growth by stimulating knowledge element spillover;the opening of high-speed railway can promote urban GDP through labor agglomeration,but it does not promote the per capita GDP;high-speed railway does not support promoting economic growth through industrial structure optimization for the time being,which takes longer to accumulate.