An Analysis of the Heterogeneous Impact of the High-Speed Rail Opening on the Growth Rate of Total Factor Productivity

Abstract

The rapid development of high-speed railways in China has greatly promoted exchanges and cooperation between the regions, and improved the level of collaborative innovation and economic efficiency between the regions. Based on the panel data of municipalities and prefecture-level cities in 2004—2014, this paper empirically analyzes the heterogeneity impact of high-speed rail opening on the growth rate of TFP and further tests the robustness of the empirical results. The results show that, on the whole, the opening of high-speed rail promotes the growth rate of TFP in the opening regions, but there are differences in different levels of cities: the opening of high-speed rail improves the TFP growth rate in regional central urban areas and non-central urban areas, but inhibits the growth rate of TFP in the central cities of the whole country. From a regional perspective, the high-speed rail opening has different TFP growth rates for different opening regions: the opening of high-speed rail has promoted the growth rate of TFP in the eastern region, but the impact on the growth rate of TFP in the central and western regions is not significant. In addition, the high-speed rail has a heterogeneous impact on the dynamic effect and the hysteresis effect of the TFP growth rate in the opening area. At the same time, the opening of high-speed rail has a heterogeneous impact on the improvement of technical efficiency, the rate of technological progress and the change of scale efficiency in different levels of cities and regions, and has the largest impact on the change of scale efficiency.