Roads, railroads and decentralization of Chinese cities

Baum-Snow, Nathaniel , Brandt, Loren, Henderson, J. Vernon, Turner, Matthew A. and Zhang, Qinghua (2016) Roads, railroads and decentralization of Chinese cities. The Review of Economics and Statistics . ISSN 0034-6535 (In Press)

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Abstract

We investigate how configurations of urban railroads and highways influenced urban form in Chinese cities since 1990. Each radial highway displaces about 4 percent of central city population to surrounding regions and ring roads displace about an additional 20 percent, with stronger effects in the richer coastal and central regions. Each radial railroad reduces central city industrial GDP by about 20 percent, with ring roads displacing an additional 50 percent. Similar estimates for the locations of manufacturing jobs and residential location of manufacturing workers is evidence that radial highways decentralize service sector activity, radial railroads decentralize industrial activity and ring roads decentralize both. Historical transportation infrastructure provides identifying variation in more recent measures of infrastructure.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/rest
Additional Information:	© 2016 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD100 Land Use H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications T Technology > TE Highway engineering. Roads and pavements
Journal of Economic Literature Classification System:	O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O2 - Development Planning and Policy R - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics > R4 - Transportation Systems
Sets:	Departments > Geography and Environment Collections > Economists Online
Project and Funder Information:	Project ID Funder Name Funder ID RA-2009-11-013 International Growth Centre UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Lincoln Institute of Land Policy UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council UNSPECIFIED
Date Deposited:	08 Aug 2016 09:01
URL:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67374/

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