Infrastructure, financial access, and economic growth: evidence from a quasi-experiment in China
利用中国大规模高速公路网络扩张的准实验，发现交通基础设施改善显著促进了县域制造业增长，尤其对依赖外部融资的行业影响更大，并揭示了银行地理扩张这一被忽视的渠道。
Abstract This article investigates the impact of transportation infrastructure projects on industrial growth and how the financial sector evolves accordingly to facilitate growth by leveraging a large-scale quasi-experiment that expands the highway network substantially in China. We find that the highway network improvements significantly promote county-level manufacturing value-added, especially for those industries with higher external financial dependence. Further analyses depict a previously neglected channel that road expansion induces geographical expansion of joint-equity commercial banks, which provide additional loans to financially constrained firms that grow by building up their leverage.