The Impacts of High-Speed Rail on Producer Service Industry Agglomeration: Evidence from China’s Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Abstract

The construction of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China has greatly weakened the spatial barriers to the flow of production resources, which has become a key factor affecting the spatial layout of the producer service industry. Based on the panel data of 26 cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration from 2005 to 2018, this paper uses a multi-phase difference-in-difference (DID) model to examine the impacts of HSR services on the agglomerations of the producer service industry and its subdivision industries from two perspectives, namely, specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration. The results show that: (1) on the whole, the opening of an HSR has a significant positive effect on the specialized agglomeration of the producer service industry and a significant negative effect on the diversified agglomeration; (2) in terms of subdivision industries, there exists significant industrial heterogeneity in the agglomeration effect of the producer service industry under HSR services, regardless of whether it is a specialized agglomeration or a diversified agglomeration; among them, the financial industry belongs to the “highly significant promotion” industry, while the other four subdivision industries belong to the “highly significant inhibition” industry.