Aggregate Productivity Effects of Road Investment - A Reassessment for Western Europe

Andreas Kopp ()

ERSA conference papers from European Regional Science Association

Abstract: The paper investigates the productivity effects of national road infrastructure investment in Western Europe.The study makes use of newly available OECD/ECMT data showing a secular decline of productivity growth and of transport infrastructure investment. Infrastructure availability is modelled like an unpaid shadow factor allowing for more than constant aggregate returns to scale while firms operate with linear homogenous production functions, with transport as an input. Productivity increases are measured by the Toernquist index The link between road investment and macroeconomic productivity is studied using a new econometric technique to avoid the identification problem that discredited the early literature. The results show that there is no clear over- or underinvestment. The aggregate level of road investment seems to be such that the implied rate of return is close to the opportunity cost of private capital.

Date: 2005-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff and nep-geo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa05/papers/631.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa05p631

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERSA conference papers from European Regional Science Association Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gunther Maier ().