The Impact Of High-speed Rail Service Supply On Urban Economic Resilience

Since the 21 st century,natural and man-made disturbances,internal and external disturbances,such as financial crisis,global warming and COVID-19 pandemic,have posed a great threat and impact on global urban development.How to improve urban economic resilience has become a development problem faced by all countries.In the backdrop of "eight vertical and eight horizontal".High-speed rail(HSR)has a direct or indirect impact on social and economic factors,resulting in great externalities.Evaluating and predicting its impact on improving urban economic resilience is conducive to achieving the goal of sustainable urban development.In order to clarify the influence degree and mechanism of HSR service supply on urban economic resilience,based on the New Economic Geography Theory and Evolutionary Economic Geography Theory,we adopt difference-in-differences model(DID)and multiple mediating effect model to analyze the impact of high-speed rail service supply on urban economic resilience from the local and spatial spillover perspectives.This paper uses the panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to2019 as the research object.Firstly,the index system of urban economic resilience is constructed from three levels: risk resistance,organization and adjustment ability,as well as renewal and development ability,and we use it to obtain the economic resilience index of each city.Secondly,the high-speed rail service frequency is taken as the proxy variable of high-speed rail development,and the continuous difference-in-differences model is adopted to analyze the impact of high-speed rail service frequency on the urban economic resilience along the rail,that is,the local effect of high-speed rail.Thirdly,through a series of endogenous problem handling,robustness checks,heterogeneity analysis and influence mechanism analysis,the impact of HSRs on urban economic resilience is further improved.Finally,the spatial difference-in-differences model(SDID)is used to analyze the spillover effect and boundary caused by the high-speed rail from a spillover perspective,and the impact of high-speed rail on the "neighboring places" of the site city is included in the evaluation scope.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)the urban economic resilience in China has been improving with time,but the level of economic resilience varies greatly among regions,and most regions show obvious path dependence and spatial correlation;(2)in general,the opening of high-speed rail and the service intensity of high-speed rail have significantly improved the economic resilience of site cities along the high-speed rail lines,with significant local effects;(3)the analysis of the impact mechanism shows that high-speed rail mainly improves the economic resilience of the site and surrounding cities through the potential effect of human resources,the dynamic effect of new economic sectors and the vitality effect of innovation output,and has a greater impact through the mediation channel of innovation output;(4)heterogeneity analysis shows that the high-speed rail effect shows certain differences in cities with different resource endowments,geographic locations,administrative levels and scales;(5)from a spatial spillover perspective,high-speed rail not only significantly improves the economic resilience of the site cities,but also improves the economic resilience of the cities around the site,with significant spatial spillover effect.In particular,the spatial spillover effect of high-speed rail conforms to the law of geographical distance attenuation,and the change of spillover coefficient presents an inverted U-shape,indicating that the shadow of agglomeration brought by high-speed rail does not contradict the equilibrium of the regional economy in agglomeration.This paper introduces the concept of urban economic resilience into the analysis framework of the HSRs’ economic effects,and measures the geographical boundary and effective scope of the spillover effect of high-speed rail service supply on urban economic resilience.This enriches the research on the economic distribution effect of transportation infrastructure.It also provides an innovative way to realize the sustainable development of transportation-regional society and economy,which is beneficial to the planning and construction of resilient cities in the future.There are 8pictures,19 figures and 97 references.