This brief survey reviews recent work on transportation in poor and middle-income countries. After reviewing a few key global facts and taking stock of the data available, it focuses on eight key themes that are emphasized in this literature relative to work on transportation in rich countries....

This chapter surveys new data sources employed in urban and regional economics in the past decade and the insights they have enabled. We first provide a primer on the data sources, including advantages, disadvantages and use cases. Historical data sources include linked census records as well as...

We develop a new measure of land quality by estimating weights in a Poisson regression of grid-cell population on geographic characteristics and country fixed effects. Aggregating to countries, we construct average land quality (ALQ) and quality-adjusted population density (QAPD). We show:...

Previous work on transportation investments has focused on average impacts in high- and middle-income countries. We estimate average and heterogeneous effects in a poor continent, Africa, using roads and cities data spanning 50 years in 39 countries. Using changes in market access due to distant...

We develop a new measure of land quality by estimating weights in a Poisson regression of population in grid cells on a vector of geographic characteristics and country fixed effects. Aggregating to the level of countries, we construct average land quality (ALQ) and quality-adjusted population...

We develop a novel method for assessing the effect of constraints imposed by spatially-fixed natural resources on aggregate economic output. We apply it to estimate and compare the projected effects of climate change and population growth over the course of the 21st century, by country and...

Quality-adjusted population density (QAPD) is population divided by l and area that has been adjusted for geographic characteristics. We derive weights on these geographic characteristics from a global regression of population density at the quarter-degree level with country fixed effects. We...

Previous work on transportation investments has focused on average impacts in high- and middle-income countries. We estimate average and heterogeneous effects in a poor continent, Africa, using roads and cities data spanning 50 years in 39 countries. Using changes in market access due to distant...

Quality-adjusted population density (QAPD) is population divided by land area that has been adjusted for geographic characteristics. We derive weights on these geographic characteristics from a global regression of population density at the quarter-degree level with country fixed effects. We...