Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Donaldson, Dave
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20101199
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 899-934
• 关键词: trade liberalization; INTERNATIONAL-TRADE; INDIA; PRODUCTIVITY; TECHNOLOGY; migration; gravity; GROWTH; COSTS

摘要

How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects, and what explains these benefits? This paper uses archival data from colonial India to investigate the impact of India's vast railroad network. Guided by four results from a general equilibrium trade model, I find that railroads: (1) decreased trade costs and interregional price gaps; (2) increased interregional and international trade; (3) increased real income levels; and (4) that a sufficient statistic for the effect of railroads on welfare in the model accounts well for the observed reduced-form impact of railroads on real income in the data.