Contribution to productivity or pork barrel?: The two faces of infrastructure investment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cadot, Olivier; Roeller, Lars-Hendrik; Stephan, Andreas
• 署名单位: Humboldt University of Berlin; INSEAD Business School; Leibniz Association; DIW Berlin - Deutsches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.08.006
• 发表日期: 2006
• 页码: 1133-1153
• 关键词: growth; infrastructure; political economy; lobbying; france

摘要

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in production-function estimates and generate testable hypotheses on the forces that shape infrastructure policy. Our empirical findings on a panel of France's regions over 1985-92 suggest that electoral concerns and influence activities were, indeed, significant determinants of the cross-regional allocation of transportation infrastructure investments. By contrast, we find little evidence of concern for the maximization of economic returns to infrastructure spending, even after controlling for pork-barrel. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.