Abstract:

Taking the Qinghai-Tibet Railway as a natural experiment, this paper adopts the DID model to investigate the impact of transportation infrastructure on regional economic development. Applying the model to 2001--2019 county–level panel data and 2004-2010 Above–scale Industrial Enterprises in Qinghai and Tibet, we find that the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has a significant effect on improving regional economic growth. First, it significantly improves the per capita GDP of counties that have railway stations in the short, medium, and long run, respectively. However, it only has such an effect on the growth of the primary and secondary industries. Second, we show that the mechanism behind the positive effect on the growth of the primary industry is that the railway stimulates animal husbandry in these two provinces.Third, we further show that the railway significantly improves the output, profit, and TFP of above-scale industrial enterprises in the short run, which lends support to the positive effect of the railway on the growth of county-level industrial per capita GDP. Additionally, based on satellite light data from 1995 to 2009, the study finds that regions within 1–10 km of railway stations experienced a 128% increase in satellite light intensity compared to regions 10-20 km away. This paper contributes to the literature that identifies the impact of transportation infrastructure on the regional economy and provides empirical evidence to quantify the effects of the Qinghai–Tibet Railway on economic development in Western China.

Key words:

transportation infrastructure, Qinghai–Tibet Railway, development of regional economy

 ,