Flooding Away the Economic Gains from Transport Infrastructure: Evidence from Colonial Jamaica

Joel Huesler and Eric Strobl
Additional contact information
Joel Huesler: University of Bern
Eric Strobl: University of Bern

No 268, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: We investigate how the frequent flooding that damaged the internal transport infrastructure in late 19th and early 20th colonial Jamaica affected local economies. To this end the evolution of the road and railways transport system was geo-referenced and combined with geo-localized damaging flood events, as well as with information on local economic activity proxied by internal tax revenue. Econometric analysis on our 30 year parish level time varying data set shows that lower market access from the flood disruptions to transport reduced tax revenue on average by 3.5%, and during some incidences up to 9.1%, over its two year impact. Decomposing the tax data by source suggests that both the property and the non-agricultural service sectors suffered after damaging floods. In contrast, flood disruptions benefited the agricultural sector, although only agricultural traders and not producers appear to have gained from investments in the transport network in general.

Keywords: Transportation Network; Flooding; Market Access; Regional Economics; Jamaica (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_268.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:hes:wpaper:0268

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Sharp ().