Infrastructure’s Long-Lived Impact on Urban Development: Theory and Empirics

Arthur Grimes, Eyal Apatov (), Larissa Lutchman and Anna Robinson
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Eyal Apatov: Motu Economic and Public Policy Research
Larissa Lutchman: The University of Auckland

No 14_11, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: We analyse impacts that infrastructure provision and other factors have on long run urban growth. Reflecting spatial equilibrium insights, growing cities have preferred attributes relative to other cities. These attributes may include natural characteristics, social amenities and transport infrastructure that have productive and/or amenity value. We outline a theoretical model that includes distance-related effects on individual utility and thence population location, and we test this model using historical data covering 1926 to 2006 across 56 New Zealand towns. Instruments dating back to 1880 are used to deal with potential endogeneity issues, and we use spatial-econometrics techniques to test for spatial spillovers between cities. Our analysis shows that four dominant factors have impacted positively on urban growth, especially since 1966: nearby land-use capability, human capital, sunshine hours and proximity to the country’s dominant city, Auckland.

Keywords: Infrastructure; city development; population growth; migration; spatial equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-tre and nep-ure
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https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/14_11.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Infrastructure?s Long-Lived Impact on Urban Development: Theory and Empirics (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtu:wpaper:14_11

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