University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 Impacts of French High-Speed Rail Investment on Urban Agglomeration Economies Mengke Chen University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Economics Commons, Transportation Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Chen, Mengke, "Impacts of French High-Speed Rail Investment on Urban Agglomeration Economies" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1234. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1234 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1234 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Impacts of French High-Speed Rail Investment on Urban Agglomeration Economies Abstract In order to investigate the role of high-speed rail (HSR) investment in aiding the transformation process of urban agglomeration economies, this study focuses on three fundamental questions through an observation of more than 100 French cities. First, how has HSR investment impacted the reshaping of accessibility patterns in France? Using rail travel timetables from 1982 to 2009, I adopt gravity models to identify the spatial distribution of accessibility in France. I find that although the introduction of HSR improved the level of mobility and accessibility both between Paris and other cities and among cities in general, this was unequal and depended upon the location of cities relative to the newly built HSR line. Second, does HSR investment induce agglomeration economies? If so, how? I use commune-level panel data to study the economic performance of HSR cities by using a matched-pair analysis and various regression models with instrumental variables.