Infrastructure improvement is one of the driving forces behind growth and structural changes in the village economy. This study aims to determine the impact of improvements in rural infrastructure, particularly connecting roads between villages, on the direction of changes in the main income...

This paper explores the effect of road rehabilitation on violent conflict using a novel, rich dataset of road rehabilitation projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country received massive external investments in transport infrastructure rehabilitation under conditions of endemic...

This paper examines the impact of a large-scale rural road construction program-the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY)-on the performance of rural manufacturing firms in India. While these firms provide vital non-farm employment in rural areas, their growth is often thought to be...

This study evaluates the impact of investment in rural roads on household welfare in Albania. Using a difference-in-differences method, we find that treated households experienced a 35-percentage point increase in the quality of roads relative to control households and reduced travel times to...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the international political economy of Korea and its effects due to geopolitical tension between China and the USA. Design/methodology/approach - Economic war between China and the USA has prolonged longer than expected. Aftermath of the COVID-19...

We examine the impact of rural road connectivity on economic and social outcomes in the context of India’s PMGSY, the world’s largest rural road program. Using a novel village-level survey explicitly designed around PMGSY’s rollout, we exploit quasi-random variation in road placement to...

The construction of the Tehran-Shomal Freeway is a major infrastructural project in Iran aimed at enhancing connectivity between Tehran and northern regions. This study evaluates the environmental impacts associated with the construction of the third section of this freeway. Using Life Cycle...

Rural roads, serving as vital links between remote areas and economic centers, play an indispensable role in rural development. This paper investigates the relationship between rural road development and various economic outcomes in China from 2008 to 2021. Based on comprehensive novel road...

The urban transportation system is vital for efficient daily travel. Understanding how urban road network density and width influence traffic performance is crucial for informed decision-making in urban planning. In this study, we designed three homogeneous square road networks with varying...

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are essential to achieving the EU's vision of seamless transport for both passengers and freight. The availability of 'open' and high quality transport data will provide substantial improvements in performance of transport networks, operations and services,...

The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) region has historically been an important route for global trade - connecting Asia to Europe (and vice versa) and beyond through the ancient Silk Road before the evolution of maritime trade and commerce in the 1500s. The Asian Development...

Carter (2024) examines the historical conditions that shape protection versus assimilation for indigenous communities, arguing that state-led conscription programs are one such factor. In a natural experiment leveraging conscription for a 1920s Peruvian highway designed to replicate a...

This paper characterizes economically optimal investments into Africa's road network in partial and general equilibrium - based on a detailed topography of the network, road construction costs, frictions in cross-border trading, and economic geography. Drawing from data on 144 million...

The recent debates on infrastructure spending have led to renewed interest in the measurement of infrastructure and its effects on growth and well-being. This paper updates estimates of one important type of infrastructure capital—highways and streets. We compare BEA's capital measures with...

This paper builds on a previous paper by the authors (Kornfeld and Fraumeni, 2022) that primarily used U.S. Federal Highway Administration Highway Statistics data to disaggregate investment in highways and streets into more detailed types to produce updated estimates of net wealth stocks and...

This paper uses four decades of panel data on Brazilian municipalities to study the separate and joint impacts of highway and electricity infrastructure access on local economic outcomes. The identification strategy employs difference-in-difference estimators with staggered adoption design and...

This paper estimates the local welfare impacts of highway maintenance investments. We instrument road quality exploiting Indonesia’s two-step budgeting process for allocating funding to local road authorities. Using comprehensive data on road quality from 1990-2007, we find evidence that...

The structure employed is a small open economy, with one city and a rural hinterland, two traded goods, a transport sector, two specific factors, and mobile labour. A socially profitable programme will promote not only internal, but also external trade. Theory and numerical examples indicate...

With the impacts of climate change intensifying, sea level is expected to rise 0.25–0.30 meters by 2050. With a one-degree Celsius rise in temperature, precipitation globally is expected to increase by 7%. An important service linked to these pressures are roads, which are known to flood and...

This paper analyzes the existence of electoral cycles in infrastructure provision in the context of a large rural road building program in India. We use data covering 150,000 roads over a decade to demonstrate an increase in road building activity before state elections. These electoral cycles...

This article examines the impact of transport policies on road accessibility in Ghana. To measure accessibility gains, the article applies a model that compares the area and population that can be reached in under four hours by road from any city in 2010 and 2019. By quantifying travel times...

In wintertime, snowfall causes road blockages especially in areas located at high altitudes and consequently interrupts daily activities of dwellers in these areas. Damavand is a city located in the Alborz mountain range whose roads are mostly covered by snow in winter. An initial action to open...

The paper examines the impact of a rural roads construction program in India on women's outcomes. While spatial integration can provide women with increased education and employment opportunities, the extent of benefits might be limited by underlying gender norms. We identify the impact of the...

As global plastic waste continues to grow, the global community is coalescing to reduce plastic waste. Some stakeholders are also exploring new options to use plastic waste as partial substitute for raw material. The use of plastic waste as a bitumen modifier in road construction, referred to...

Increased consumption is a key driving factor for further economic development in China. This study examines the influence of road network density on consumption vitality, using big data and various empirical models. The results show that increasing the road density improves consumption...