Impacts of High-Speed Rail Construction on Urban Agglomerations: Evidence from Kyushu in Japan

High-speed rail integrates regions and cities, and thus can possibly have significant impacts on the distribution of economic activities. Using the opening and extensions of a high-speed rail, Shinkansen, in Kyushu, Japan, we examine its effects on the distribution of economic activities across urban agglomerations. We focus on changes in land prices and estimate hedonic price equations to conduct a difference-in-differences analysis. We find that the large metropolitan areas gained from the high-speed rail by experiencing increases in land prices, whereas small metropolitan areas located between them lost by experiencing decreased land prices.