Infrastructures and economic performance: a critical comparison across four approaches

The paper reviews studies analysing the relationship between infrastructures and economic performance. Four different approaches are separately considered along an ideal path from theory-based to data-oriented models: the production function approach, the cost function approach, growth-models, and vector autoregression models. The review shows that, even with different shades and points of caution, the general idea that infrastructure has an economic enhancing effect appears to be quite robust across studies belonging to different methodological approaches.