Economic Benefits of Investments in Transport Infrastructure

This paper begins by motivating the need for including “wider economic effects” when conducting transport infrastructure appraisal, followed by a discussion of various techniques to do so. The major focus is on studies from the cost function perspective that incorporate spillover benefits from public infrastructure capital, with a presentation of applications on highways, airports, and ports infrastructure stocks. The substantial differences between approaches focusing on “narrow” and “wider” impacts is evaluated, along with discussion of how application of the tools of spatial econometrics has facilitated estimation of models that capture wider economic benefits.