Chinese agriculture in the age of high-speed rail: Effects on agricultural value added and food output

Although evidence shows that roads and conventional railways promote rural development, little is known about the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on agricultural output. To bridge this gap, this study explores how the establishment of HSR affects agricultural production. The causal effect was identified by constructing panel data mainly for Chinese counties between 2001 and 2017 using a difference-in-differences (DID) framework. The empirical results, after controlling for county-specific linear trends, reveal that an HSR connection contributes to increasing agricultural value added and food output by approximately 4% and 6%, respectively. Moreover, the effects are mainly driven by increased productivity and adjustments to grain production and economic crops rather than the increased use of observed inputs. These results provide fresh evidence on the effect of transportation improvements on agricultural economies and highlight the need to control nonparallel trends when using the DID method to disentangle the effect. [EconLit Citations: O18, Q13, L92].