Before the First Train: Reproducibility archive

Abstract

This repository is the reproducibility archive accompanying the article “Before the First Train: Pre-Opening Station–City Readiness and Urban Development around High-Speed Rail Stations — Cross-Country Evidence”. The archive contains frozen analytical evidence, the complete archived analysis-code lineage, machine-readable supplementary inputs, publication tables, exact figure inputs, deterministic figure and document builders, final publication figures, and integrity and reproducibility audits. The study reconstructs pre-opening station–city readiness across a 28-station cross-country HSR sample. The supported matched analysis contains 11 treated stations and 17 historically verified treated–control pairs. The cumulative matched GAIA contrast is −0.822 percentage points; however, its uncertainty interval includes zero and the pre-period placebo indicates divergence. The archived evidence therefore does not support interpreting this conditional comparison as a definitive average causal effect.