High Speed Railways and Local Growth: An Exploratory Assessment Based on the French Experience
Résumé
While the virtuous relationship between transport infrastructures and development remains one the most believed myths, empirical studies looking at the effects of high-speed rail services show mitigated results. Thisicle takes advantage of the French experience to assess the economic benefits brought to the cities served by High Speed Trains (HST), partly or completely placed on a High Speed Line (HSL). The sample includes 492 urban units (UU) for which the evolution of employment, notably of executives, is studied over 1982-2006. As the choice of the territories served by HSL/HST is not random, we use a selection model. Empirical assessments of railway services cannot neglect endogeneity issues between infrastructures and local development. The selection model shows results with an opposite sign to the ones based on the Ordinary Least Squares method. Our estimates particularly emphasize the differences between UUs served by HSL or simply by HST. The UUs served on HSL have faced a lower rate of jobs (executives) creation but the effects of infrastructures on the annual growth rate are about +1.3% (+3.7%) once corrected from the selection bias. The UUs served by HST partly placed on classical railway have experienced better average performances but the effect directly due to infrastructures is negative: respectively -1.1 % and -3.0 %. These results could be useful to complete the traditional socio-economical assessments of infrastructure projects. Urban externalities, Economic Base theory, selection model, treatment effect