High-speed Rail and Industrial Developments: Evidence from House Prices and City-Level GDP in China

Abstract

With unique house transaction data, we study the distributional effect of high-speed rail (HSR) by examining the house price premium of industrial parks in two important core-periphery pairs of China. For “Shanghai-Suzhou” pair, the premium of manufacturing industrial parks grows in the core, but the growth in the periphery area near HSR stations is larger. The premium of service industrial parks grows in the core, but drops in the periphery area far from HSR stations. Such patterns do not hold for “Beijing-Tianjin” pair; we discuss the rationales. Overall, HSR decentralizes (agglomerates) the manufacturing (service) industry from (towards) the core.

Keywords: High-Speed Rail; House Price; Siphon Effect; Spillover Effect; China

JEL Classification: H55; O12; O14; P25; R42