Collective Learning in China's Regional Economic Development

• https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.01369

This paper examines two types of “learning” (or diffusion or Knowledge spillover) – inter-industry learning from related industries and inter-regional learning from geographic neighbors. In other words, the probability that a province will develop a new industry increases with the number of related industries already present and the neighboring provinces that are developed in that industry.

They used Difference in differences design to study the impact of High speed rail system on accelerating the diffusion across two provinces that are connected by the rail.