Public Investment in Transportation Infrastructures and Industry Performance in Portugal

Alfredo Pereira and Jorge Andraz

No 45, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effects at the industry level of public investment in transportation infrastructures in Portugal. The empirical results are based on VAR/ECM models for the Portuguese economy and for eighteen industries covering the whole spectrum of economic activity in the country. These models consider private-sector output, employment and investment as well as public investment. Empirical results at the aggregate level indicate that public investment has a positive effect on both private inputs as well as on private output and that it affects labor productivity positively. These aggregate results, however, hide a wide variety of industry-level effects. In absolute terms, the industries that benefit the most from public investment are Construction, Trade, Transportation, Finance, Real Estate, and Services. In turn, relative to their size, the industries that benefit the most are Mining, Non-Metal Products, Metal Products, Construction, Restaurants, Transportation, and Finance, and, therefore, public investment tends to shift the industry mix toward these industries. Accordingly, our empirical results suggest that although public investment has been a powerful instrument to enhance the long-term economic performance in Portugal it does so in a way that is rather unbalanced across industries.

Keywords: infrastructure; industry performance; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E62 H54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2006-10-08, Revised 2007-04-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Journal Article: PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURES AND INDUSTRY PERFORMANCE IN PORTUGAL (2007)
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