Big social savings in a small laggard economy: Railroad-led growth in Brazil

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050705050035
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 72-102
• 关键词: freight transportation; nineteenth-century; demand; POLICY; time

摘要

Railroad development had a profound impact in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Brazil. Direct benefits were small for passengers, but large for freight services, and contributed heavily to the transition from stagnation to growth. Domestic-use activities received a differentially large stimulus. Estimates of the social rate of return reveal that Brazil did not overinvest in railroads. A different allocation of subsidies to railroad capital could have generated additional gains. Backward linkages did little for industry, but the leakage attributable to imported inputs was modest. Institutional externalities were mixed. By 1913 railroads had paved the way for dramatically improved economic growth.