2023/02/14 by Peter H. Egger, Peter Egger, Gabriel Loumeau +1
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Urban Transport and Accessibility #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth #Economic Zones and Regional Development
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jinteco.2023.103734
We document an unprecedented change in the size and the quality of China's transport-infrastructure network between 2000 and 2013 based on hand-collected and digitized data on roads and railways. The changes are summarized and portrayed as shortest-possible transport times of people and goods between 330 prefectures of mainland China. A quantitative model of China's prefectures and a Rest of the World, featuring both goods trade and migration, suggests that the transport-infrastructure changes induced regional convergence of lagging-behind prefectures in terms of population density and, to a lesser extent, of real per-capita income. Not only changes in highway and high-speed-railway networks but also ones in lower-level road and railway networks are quantitatively important. • Assembles novel data of China's road and railway infrastructure fort he period 2000–2013. • Establishes instruments for transport networks following Monge and Kantorovich. • Establishes another instrument based on Ming-dynasty transport routes. • Calibrates a quantitative regional model of Chinese prefectures. • Estimates technology and amenity spillover parameters. • Quantifies effects pertaining to road versus railway infrastructure. • Quantifies effects of trade costs, migration costs, and amenity and technology spillovers.