IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/33489.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

High-Speed Rail and China's Electric Vehicle Adoption Miracle

Author

Listed:
  • Hanming Fang
  • Ming Li
  • Long Wang
  • Zoe Yang

Abstract

Using China's expansion of the high-speed rail system (HSR) as a quasi-natural experiment, we analyze the comprehensive vehicle registration data from 2010 to 2023 to estimate the causal impact of HSR connectivity on the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). Implementing several identification strategies, including staggered difference-in-differences (DID), Callaway and Sant'Anna (CS) DID, and two instrumental-variable approaches, we consistently find that, by alleviating range anxiety, the expansion of HSR can account for up to one third of the increase in EV market share and EV sales in China during our sample period, with effects particularly pronounced in cities served by faster HSR lines. The results remain robust when controlling for local industrial policies, charging infrastructure growth, supply-side factors, and economic development. We also find that HSR connectivity amplifies the effectiveness of charging infrastructure and consumer purchase subsidies in promoting EV adoption.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanming Fang & Ming Li & Long Wang & Zoe Yang, 2025. "High-Speed Rail and China's Electric Vehicle Adoption Miracle," NBER Working Papers 33489, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33489
    Note: DEV EEE PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w33489.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
    • L53 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Enterprise Policy
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q55 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Technological Innovation
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33489. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.