Private Costs and Public Infrastructure: The Mexican Case

Russell Murphy and Andrew Feltenstein ()

No 2001/164, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: One objective of government investment is to develop public infrastructure which may reduce private sector costs. In a developing economy, the scope for payoffs to investments of this sort may be particularly large. A major concern related to the recent fiscal adjustment in Mexico is that it has been carried out, in part, by depleting public infrastructure stocks.We estimate the effects of public infrastructure on private sector costs in Mexico and calculate the implied optimal infrastructure stocks. Our estimates indicate that previous results suggesting a large productive role of public infrastructure capital are not robust. There is little evidence that public infrastructure plays a large role in reducing private sector costs.

Keywords: WP; Mexico; public infrastructure; private sector cost; elasticity estimate; infrastructure stock; cost reduction; OLS estimate; translog cost model; Infrastructure; Transportation; Stocks; Communications in revenue administration; Public investment spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2001-10-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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