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High-speed rail launch, high-tech zone establishment, and industrial structure upgrading: A new structural economics perspective
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DOI：10.1016/j.retrec.2026.101776.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
This paper examines how high-speed rail (HSR), as a functional industrial policy, moderates the performance of High-Tech Zones (HTZ), a selective industrial policy, in promoting China's industrial upgrading. Using panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2018, we estimate the synergistic effect of HTZ designation and HSR openings with a staggered difference-in-differences design. We find that HTZs alone often underperform due to institutional misallocation and spatial peer effects; HSR significantly mitigates these inefficiencies by enhancing factor mobility and enlarging viable technologies for the government. The results show that HSR not only corrects historical policy misallocation but also reshapes inter-city policy learning, dampens destructive peer competition, and shifts industrial strategy from static local comparative advantage toward dynamic, network-based nodal advantage. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the interaction between HSR and HTZ does not trigger ghost-cities phenomena; yet synergistic effects are insignificant despite positive direction in weak endowment regions. Moreover, HSR opening effectively alleviates negative impacts on cities from HTZ peer effects of other cities within 250 km. This study provides a mechanistic contribution to New Structural Economics by revealing how infrastructure-driven functional policies raise the effectiveness of selective industrial policies.
Keywords:
High-speed railway (HSR)
National high-tech industrial development zone (HTZ)
Spatial misallocation
Peer effect
New structural economics (NSE)
Policy synergy
L92
L98
O14
O38
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