The New York Times Doesn't Read My Work

In today's New York Times, Keith Bradsher makes some very reasonable points about China's bullet trains.  In March 2013, Siqi Zheng and I made exactly the same points in our published PNAS article.  Our work isn't mentioned.  In the Bradsher article, some guys at the World Bank are cited about their deep thoughts about the "market potential increases" brought about by the bullet train;

For example, Chinese workers are now more productive. A paper for the World Bank by three consultants this year found that Chinese cities connected to the high-speed rail network, as more than 100 are already, are likely to experience broad growth in worker productivity. The productivity gains occur when companies find themselves within a couple of hours’ train ride of tens of millions of potential customers, employees and rivals.

 This market potential point (and its implications for real estate prices in 2nd and 3rd tier cities close to the superstar cities of Beijing and Shanghai) is the whole point of our peer reviewed paper.

UPDATE:  My September 2013 piece on China's Urban Pollution Dynamics with Siqi Zheng has just been published by the Journal of Economic Literature.