交通基础设施、经济增长与空间均等化——基于中国高速铁路的自然实验

Transportation Infrastructure, Economic Growth and Spatial Equalization——Natural Experiment Based on High-speed Railway in China

高速铁路作为一种区域间大型交通基础设施,对区域经济增长和经济空间格局都会产生重要影响。自中国开始大规模建设高速铁路以来,国内学者的实证研究大多认为中国高铁的开通运行具有“虹吸效应”,有助于促进相对发达区域的经济增长,但不利于相对落后区域的经济增长。我们认为,未纳入更多类型的空间尺度和未考虑大型交通基础设施运行的时间累积可能是产生上述结果的重要原因。本文以一般县级行政区、县级市和地级及以上城市市辖区为基本空间单元,利用全球夜间灯光数据作为经济发展水平的代理变量来考察2007-2013年高铁的时间累积效应和空间邻近效应对区域经济增长和空间格局的影响,同时使用GDP数据进行稳健性检验。实证研究表明,高铁运行时间越长对区域经济增长带动效应就越强,具有显著的时间累积效应;而距离高铁站点越近的区域受益于高铁的带动效应就越大,具有显著的空间邻近效应;高铁对连通的各类区域均具有显著的经济增长带动效应,但对不同类型区域的带动效应具有显著差异,一般县受益最大,其次是县级市和地级及以上城市;此外,本文通过构建高铁各线路沿途站点的基尼系数发现,高铁的运行有助于缩小区域差距、促进经济空间均等化。

As a large-scale inter-regional transportation infrastructure, high-speed railway will have an important impact on regional economic growth and economic spatial pattern. Since the large-scale construction of high-speed railways kicked off in China, most of domestic empirical studies find that the high-speed railways, once open to traffic, have the “siphon effect”: they will promote the economic growth in developed regions, but not so in underdeveloped regions. We believe that this finding is due to the failure to include more types of spatial scales or consider the cumulative effect of time in the operation of large transport infrastructure. This paper uses the general county-level administrative districts, county-level cities, and municipal districts at the prefecture level and above as the basic spatial units, and uses global nighttime lighting data as proxy variables for economic development to examine the time cumulative effect and spatial proximity effect of high-speed railways on regional economic growth and spatial structure from 2007 to 2013. The empirical study shows that the longer the high-speed railway is in service, the stronger its effect on regional economic growth, showing a significant time cumulative effect;that the closer a region is to the high-speed railway stations, the greater the benefits, showing a significant spatial proximity effect;and that the high-speed railway can significantly drive the economic growth in all regions it connects, but the effect varies for different types of regions: general counties benefit the most from it, followed by county-level cities and prefecture-level cities and above. In addition, through the construction of the Gini coefficient of high-speed railway stations, we find the operation of high-speed railways will help reduce the regional gap and promote the equalization of economic space.