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

Arbeitspapier

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 crossregional 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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WZB Discussion Paper ; No. FS IV 02-09

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation ; Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General
• Subject: Growth ; Infrastructure ; Political Economy ; Lobbying ; France

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cadot, Olivier ; Röller, Lars-Hendrik ; Stephan, Andreas
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2002

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/50931
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET