On the Dispensability of New Transportation Technologies: Evidence from Colonial Railroads in Nigeria

Dozie Okoye, Roland Pongou and Tite Yokossi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We examine Fogel's influential hypothesis that new transportation technologies may be dispensable if pre-existing technologies are viable or can simply be improved. Exploiting the construction of colonial railroads in Nigeria, we find that the railway has large long-lasting impacts on individual and local development in the North, but virtually no impact in the South neither in the short run nor in the long run. This heterogeneous impact of the railway can be accounted for by the level of pre-railway access to ports of export. Consistent with Fogel's argument, the railway did not transform areas that had viable transportation alternatives for exporting purposes. Using information on changes in shipping costs and quantities, we highlight the importance of opportunity costs to the adoption and impact of new transportation investments.

Keywords: Fogel's Hypothesis; Colonial Investments; Railway; Africa; Development; Nigeria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J0 J00 N0 N00 N7 N77 N9 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/75262/1/MPRA_paper_75262.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/77243/1/MPRA_paper_77243.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Dispensability of New Transportation Technologies: Evidence from Colonial Railroads in Nigeria (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:75262

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().