Summary: Summary: In recent years, the rapid development of the high-speed railway (HSR) among different regions in China has accelerated the flow of innovation factors such as high-quality labor, knowledge, technology, information, and experience. This not only promotes a spillover of knowledge and information, but also has an important impact on regional innovation. Based on a review of the literature, this paper uses the flow of innovation factors under the framework of the New Economic Geography to explore the impact of the HSR on the regional innovation and its spatial disparity. We take HSR availability data for 287 cities from 2004 to 2015 as a quasi-natural experimental sample to analyze the empirical effect of the HSR on regional innovation performance. According to the results, the opening of the HSR significantly improved regional innovation performance during the study period by promoting the flow of innovation factors such as high-quality labor. The HSR also had an important impact on the spatial disparity of regional innovation, as innovation performance was higher for cities with HSR than for those without. This means that extending the HSR could further widen the innovation disparity between cities. Both effects also show significant time-dynamic characteristics. Estimation results for different areas show that the opening of HSR can promote innovation performance and widen spatial disparities in the eastern area, yet has no significant impact on innovation performance and its spatial disparity in the central and western areas due to the brain drain caused by the opening of the HSR. The policy implications of the above conclusions are as follows. Firstly, local governments should constantly promote HSR construction according to the practical demand for economic and social development, and improve the deep integration of HSR construction and regional development to maximize the HSR's role in promoting regional innovation activity. Secondly, to encourage the full flow of high-quality innovation factors among different regions, each area should build a sounder knowledge spillover system and eliminate institutional barriers. Thirdly, cities that remain without HSR should constantly improve their overall competitiveness through economic and social development to attract HSR investment. Such cities also need to improve their interconnection with cities that have HSR, and to integrate seamlessly through various channels to allow them to participate in the HSR “innovation circle.” This study makes several contributions. Firstly, it is one of the earliest studies to empirically examine the impact of HSR on regional innovation activity in China. It uses the difference-in-differences model and a quasi-natural experiment to research the HSR's economic effects. This study also examines the mechanism through which the HSR impacts on regional innovation performance from the perspective of the flow of innovation factors based on the NEG theory framework. Finally, it explores whether the opening of HSR has widened or narrowed the spatial disparity in regional innovation, inspiring a more comprehensive analysis of the impact of HSR on regional innovation and the optimization of China's regional innovation spatial pattern. Although the opening of HSR mainly accelerates the flow of high-quality labor, the increased flow of technology, information, and capital among different areas as a result of HSR construction also influence regional innovation activity. It would also be interesting to explore the direction (in- or outflow) of innovation factors after the opening of HSR and its impact on regional innovation performance and its spatial disparity if the relevant data are available.
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