The Opening of High-Speed Railways, the Improvement of Factor Allocation Efficiency between Regions, and the City’s Environmental Quality Improvement

Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019, this paper uses the PSM-DID method to empirically test the internal impact mechanism among high-speed railway opening, inter-regional factor allocation efficiency, and urban environmental governance. The research results show that: (1) There is a serious factor-misallocation problem among prefecture-level cities in China. From 2006 to 2019, the factor misallocation between prefecture-level cities led to an average annual loss of total factor productivity in China’s economy of 52.5%, an average labor misallocation of 23.16%, and an average capital misallocation of 18.69%. Since 2013, capital misallocation has exceeded labor misallocation as the main reason for factor misallocation among prefecture-level cities in China. (2) The opening of high-speed railways can promote the efficiency of urban factor allocation through the technological innovation effect, the foreign investment attraction effect, and the population agglomeration effect. The improvement of urban factor allocation efficiency can promote the improvement of urban environmental quality through the effects of industrial structure optimization, income enhancement, and human capital agglomeration. Therefore, the opening of a high-speed railway can improve urban environmental quality through the intermediary effect of improving the efficiency of urban factor allocation; that is, the opening of a high-speed railway has a dual positive effect of economic efficiency and environmental quality improvement. (3) The optimization effect of factor allocation and the environmental governance effect of the opening of high-speed railways have strong urban scale heterogeneity, urban characteristic heterogeneity, and regional heterogeneity. The research content of this paper has important guiding significance for the construction of China’s new development paradigm, accelerating the construction of “a unified national market,” and green and low-carbon development.