High-speed rail, inter-regional accessibility, and regional innovation: Evidence from Japan

Abstract

This study investigates the association between accessibility and regional innovation in Japan through an empirical analysis that uses 322 prefecture-level seven-year panel data drawn from 46 prefectures covering 1981 to 2014. It assumes that regional innovation is represented by the annual number of patent applications in a region, while accessibility is represented by the effective density (ED) and existence of high-speed rail (HSR) stations in the region. Regional knowledge productivity functions are estimated by incorporating the existence of HSR stations and ED as explanatory variables to examine the associations between accessibility and regional innovation. The results show that the existence of HSR stations has a positive and statistically significant association with knowledge productivity. We also observe a significant interaction effect of these two variables, implying that the association of HSR stations with regional knowledge productivity is positive only in lower ED cases. Furthermore, our results reveal that the agglomeration of the finance industry has a positive association with regional innovation. Policy implications from the findings are discussed, such as the indirect effect of transportation infrastructure development on regional innovation through accessibility and the importance of implementing transportation development strategies jointly with regional industrial development.