The Impact of High-Speed Rail on High-Quality Economic Development: Evidence from China

Utilizing data from 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2021, this study constructs an evaluation index system for high-quality economic development across the following five dimensions: innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing. A continuous difference-in-differences approach is employed for regression analysis to empirically examine the impact of high-speed rail on high-quality economic development, further exploring its mechanisms and spatial spillover effects. The findings reveal that (1) HSR significantly promotes high-quality economic development; (2) with the development of HSR, from 2005 to 2021, China’s high-quality economic development showed an evolutionary trend of overall improvement, with a gradual optimization of spatial patterns; (3) it facilitates high-quality economic development by enhancing capital and labor mobility, strengthening industrial chain resilience, and advancing industrial structure upgrading; (4) high-speed rail development in neighboring regions generates positive spatial spillover effects on local urban economic quality; and (5) the impact of high-speed rail on high-quality economic development exhibits significant heterogeneity across cities with different regions, tiers, scales, and resource endowments. These results confirm the positive role of high-speed rail in fostering high-quality economic development.