The Real Impact of Transportation Infrastructure

Wei You is a Tenured Associate Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California San Diego in 2017, an M.A. in Economics from Peking University in 2011, and dual B.A. degrees in Economics and Mathematics from Renmin University of China in 2009. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at New York University. His research interests include urban and regional economics, development economics, and economic history. His research has been published in journals including the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, and Journal of Development Economics, etc. He has served as Principal Investigator for research projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, including both Young Scholars and General Program grants. His academic honors include the Zhang Peigang Development Economics Young Scholar Award, the Masahiko Aoki Award for Outstanding Research Paper, the Gregory Chow Best Paper Award nomination, and the Journal of Economic Geography Best Referee Award. He currently serves in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Geography.

Why do studies of transportation infrastructure often reach conflicting conclusions? We investigate this question using China's high-speed rail expansion as an empirical setting and systematically implement leading empirical strategies from the literature. We find that empirical implementation can generate substantial disagreement even within a common economic setting: conventional historical-route and inconsequential-place IVs produce sharply divergent estimates, whereas long-difference (LD) specifications with appropriate controls yield stable results. A quantitative spatial equilibrium model provides independent support for the LD estimates and implies meaningful national welfare gains. More broadly, our results demonstrate the value of systematically comparing empirical designs when evaluating major policies.