The rail in Spain : evidence on the local economic impacts of Spanish High Speed Rail

In the space of 30 years, Spain has built the world’s second most extensive HighSpeed Rail (HSR) network. Little is known, however, about how HSR is affecting localand regional economies in Spain, and whether such costly infrastructure is justified.This dissertation seeks to contribute to this by investigating if, as recent theoreticaldevelopments suggest, HSR enables the cities it connects to better exploit thebenefits of agglomeration, particularly the ability to exchange and assimilate tacit,economically valuable information. My analysis, which focuses on a sample ofconnected and soon-to-be connected inland Spanish cities plus their surroundings,finds evidence that HSR was responsible for a 0.8pp increase in the share of high-skillfirms in connected areas. No such impact is found for high-skill employment,although there is evidence that surrounding areas which are indirectly connectedexperience a boost in overall employment levels. This difference in impacts betweendirectly-connected cities and their surrounding areas suggests that HSR may not onlyencourage inter-city but also intra-city dislocation of economic activity