Impact of high-speed rail operation on urban economic resilience: Evidence from local and spillover perspectives in China

Abstract

Based on the panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019, this paper provides an empirical investigation of the mechanism and the impact of high-speed rails (HSRs) on urban economic resilience. The economic resilience evaluation has been constructed from three levels: risk resistance ability, organization and adjustment ability, as well as renewal and development ability. The difference-in-differences (DID) model and spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model are adopted to analyze the impact of the HSR service intensity on the urban economic resilience. Results imply that the HSR has significantly improved the urban economic resilience along the lines. Further analysis shows that HSR mainly increases the economic resilience through potential effect of human resources, dynamic effect of new economic sectors and vitality effect of innovation output. From a spatial spillover perspective, HSR not only improves the local economic resilience, but also improves that of neighboring cities. The spatial spillover effect of HSR conforms to the law of geographic distance attenuation with spillover coefficient changes. Moreover, the study documents a series of heterogeneity analysis concerning HSR effects across Chinese cities. Particularly, HSRs promote the development of talents, new economic sectors, as well as innovation output, and help resource-based cities unlock their over-reliance on resource industries, thereby improving their economic resilience. This paper introduces the concept of urban economic resilience into the analysis framework of HSR effect, and measures the geographical boundary and effective scope of the HSR's spillover effect. It provides a new lens for the sustainable development of transportation-regional social economy.