The 34th “Theory and Policy” at RUC NADS

High-speed Railway towards Economic Agglomeration: Theoretical Mechanism and Night-time Light Evidence

Speaker: CHEN Qiangyuan, Associate Professor at School of Economics, Shanghai University

Moderator: NIE Huihua, Professor at School of Economics, Executive Deputy Dean of National Academy of Development and Strategy, RUC (NADS)

Time: April 15, 2019 (Monday) 13:45-14:30

Venue: Meeting Room 815, Chongde Building West Wing (Keyan Building Block A）

Abstract:

The Report at the 19th National Congress of the CPC pointed out that expediating more balanced regional development is a pivot support for economic system modernization. This paper studies whether high-speed railway (HSR) can promote urban economic agglomeration. Applying a vertically connected free entrepreneur model on HSR, this article depicts the way HSR functions on economic agglomeration, through saving the cost of transport and knowledge spillover effect on human capital flow. To prove the theoretical mechanism, this paper calculates spatial economic aggregating situation in China based on night-time light data and explores the mechanism of HSR influencing on urban economic agglomeration through a quasi natural experiment.

The difference-in-difference estimation indicates that: (1) HSR raises economic agglomeration level in major cities, which means that compared with “one-city effect” brought by HSR, the “siphonic effect” needs to put more attention on; (2) HSR drives economic activities to aggregate in major cities through transport cost saving and knowledge spillover of human capital flow, thus proving the theoretical model; (3) These results are accepted by a series of Robustness Test. This research can contribute on policymaking, for example, that we should speed up on building a systematic evaluation system regarding the economic effect of HSR construction, avoid the risk of social and economic sustainable development, which is resulted from a lack of high-end factors in small and medium-sized cities under HSR network expansion, as well as raising the awareness of balanced development and shared development.

Speaker Profile:

CHEN Qiangyuan, Associate Professor and Master Supervisor at School of Economics, Shanghai University. His research focuses on spatial economics. Chen has published over ten papers in Social Sciences in China, Economic Research, Management World and other academic journals. He presided over seven projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China and others and received excellent research achievement award of provincial level and other awards.