Spatial Spillover Effects of Economic Growth Based on High-Speed Railways in Northeast China

This paper examines the spatial spillover effects of public transportation infrastructure on regional economy in Northeast China, the “rust belt” region in China. The dataset consists of socioeconomic data from 47 cities in the area during the period of year 2005 through 2015. Accessibility is used as an explanatory variable to reflect the influence of infrastructure on economic development. In order to avoid the endogenous, queen contiguity matrix is used to define the spatial weight matrix. In the paper, the dynamic panel data model is also used to explore the effects of high-speed railways in the whole study area and attempted to confirm the spatial differences among Heilongjiang Province, Jilin Province, and Liaoning Province. The results show that the high-speed railways increase the cities’ connection in terms of accessibility, and a significant positive spillover effect exists after the construction of high-speed railways (HSR), indicating the extensive economic benefits of HSR construction, despite of the overall economic difficulty experienced by this region.