High-speed rail and industrial developments: Evidence from house prices and city-level GDP in China

摘要

With unique datasets, this paper studies the distributional impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on industrial developments by examining the house price premium of industrial parks in two important core-periphery city pairs of China: Shanghai-Suzhou and Beijing-Langfang. We find that in core cities, the premium of service industrial parks (SIPs) has grown faster near HSR stations, while that of manufacturing industrial parks (MIPs) has grown slower near HSR stations. In periphery cities, however, the premium of SIPs has grown slower near HSR stations. Moreover, the premium of MIPs has grown faster near HSR stations of Suzhou. The results suggest that HSR facilitates a "spillover effect" between the core and peripheries for the manufacturing industry, but a "siphon effect" for the service industry. City-level GDP analysis for the two industries delivers consistent results. Our findings shed light on the underlying reason for the spatial variation in the economic impacts of HSR.