 Roadways, input sourcing, and patterns of specializationEuropean Economic Review, 2019, vol. 120, issue C Abstract: We propose a model where the internal transport network facilitates the sourcing of intermediate goods from geographically diffuse locations. A denser internal transport network promotes thus the growth of industries that rely on a large variety of inputs. The model shows that heterogeneities in internal transport infrastructures can become a key factor in shaping comparative advantage and specialization. Evidence based on industry-level trade data grants support to the main prediction of the model: countries with denser road networks export relatively more in industries that exhibit broader input bases. We show that this correlation is robust to several possible confounding effects proposed by the literature, such as the impact of institutions on specialization in complex goods. Furthermore, we show that a similar correlation arises as well when the density of the local transport network is measured by the density of their internal waterways, and also when road density is instrumented with measures of terrain roughness. Keywords: International trade; Comparative advantage; Internal transportation costs (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:120:y:2019:i:c:s0014292119301771 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.103319 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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