High-Speed Rail Development and Regional Inequalities: Evidence From Japan
High-Speed Rail Development and Regional Inequalities: Evidence From Japan
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DOI：
10.1177/03611981221078566
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发表时间：
2022-02
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Norihiro Miwa;Ayushman Bhatt;H. Kato
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Norihiro Miwa;Ayushman Bhatt;H. Kato
本研究以日本周边地区为研究对象，探讨高铁的引入对地区收入与创新的影响。假设人均收入(IN)和每名员工的专利申请数量(PA)分别代表地区收入和创新。“周边”是根据每个城市的就业密度及其可及性来定义的，后者是通过有效密度来衡量的，有效密度是一个代表区域间交流机会的指数。本文使用了日本40年来的市级面板数据。对不同治疗时间的城市进行了差异分析，以考察高铁对外围地区IN和PA的影响。研究结果表明，高铁的引入能够通过对周边地区的IN和PA产生积极影响，从而有助于缓解地区不平等。此外，基于可达性的周边地区的评估结果表明，高铁对IN的影响较小，而对PA的影响在这些外围地区比核心地区大。这些都表明，在地理上经济活动集中的情况下，特别是在日本这样的经济活动地理集中的背景下，边缘地区的可及性可能在赶上核心区域的经济增长方面发挥关键作用。还有人认为，交通不便的外围地区的增强型港口发展区可能没有被很好地利用来获得经济收益，因为这些地区的产业结构不发达，而且距离大型中心城市很远，这导致了追赶的挑战。
This study investigates the impact of the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional income and innovation, focusing on peripheral regions in Japan. Average income per capita (IN) and number of patent applications per employee (PA) are assumed to represent regional income and innovation, respectively. “Peripheries” are defined based on each municipality’s employment density and its accessibility, the latter is measured by effective density, an index representing interregional communication opportunities. Municipality-level panel data from Japan for a 40-year period are used. A difference-in-differences analysis of municipalities with variable treatment timings is employed to investigate the impact of HSR on the IN and PA of peripheries. The findings indicate that the introduction of HSR has been able to contribute to the mitigation of regional inequalities by positively affecting the IN and PA of peripheries. Furthermore, the results estimated with the accessibility-based peripheries show that the impacts of HSR on IN are smaller and on PA are larger in these peripheries than in core regions. These suggest the crucial role that accessibility may play in peripheries for catching up with the economic growth of core regions, particularly in a context of geographical concentration of economic activities, as in the case of Japan. It is also argued that the enhanced PA in peripheries with poor accessibility might not have been well exploited for economic gains because of their underdeveloped industrial structures and distance to large hub cities, leading to challenges in catching up.