Author(s)

Rui Fan, Zheng Gong, Sitong Liu

Corresponding Author

Rui Fan

ABSTRACT

The industrial structure often reflects the level of economic development of a country. After experiencing rapid economic development, China has revealed the problems of unreasonable industrial structure and low overall level of economic structure. Therefore, the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure must be put on the important agenda of economic reform as a core issue. High-speed railroad has a significant responsibility in regional development because of its significant externality. Will high-speed railroad, as a sign of the times in transportation development, have an impact on the optimization and upgrading of regional industries? Based on this question, this paper constructs a quasi-natural experiment using high-speed railway opening as the core explanatory variable, and selects panel data of 277 cities in China from 2010-2019 to assess the impact of high-speed railway opening on industrial optimization and upgrading using a double difference model. The results show that the opening and operation of high-speed railways play a significant positive role in promoting industrial structure upgrading, i.e., the effect of industrial optimization and upgrading in cities with high-speed railways is greater than that in cities without high-speed railways. Moreover, under different regions and city groupings, the effect of high-speed rail opening on industrial upgrading has produced some heterogeneity. The above findings have some implications for promoting industrial transformation and upgrading and achieving sustainable economic development in China.

KEYWORDS

High-speed railroad, Industrial structure, Optimization and upgrading, Double difference method