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作者

Gabriel J. Felbermayr;Alexander Tarasov

来源

来源 JOURNAL OF URBAN ECONOMICS,Vol.130,P.

语言

英文

关键字

International trade;Infrastructure investment;Economic geography;Border effect;F11;R42;R13

作者单位

Austrian Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Arsenal Object 20, 1030 Vienna;HSE University, Faculty of Economic Sciences, 11 Pokrovsky Bulvar, Moscow, Russia;Austrian Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Arsenal Object 20, 1030 Vienna;HSE University, Faculty of Economic Sciences, 11 Pokrovsky Bulvar, Moscow, Russia

摘要

The distribution of transport infrastructure across space is the outcome of deliberate government planning that reflects a desire to unlock the welfare gains from regional economic integration. Yet, despite being one of the oldest government activities, the economic forces shaping the endogenous emergence of infrastructure have not been rigorously studied. This paper provides a stylized analytical framework of open economies in which planners decide non-cooperatively on transport infrastructure investments across continuous space. Allowing for intra- and international trade, the resulting equilibrium investment schedule features underinvestment that turns out particularly severe in border regions and that is amplified by the presence of discrete border costs. In European data, the mechanism explains about 21% of the border effect identified in a conventionally specified gravity regression.