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...

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...

Do 'local' methods of evaluation, such as partial equilibrium analysis at market prices or estimation of shadow prices, provide reliable assessments of a large rural roads programme's social profitability? Consider a small open economy with one city and a rural hinterland, two traded goods, two...

The study examined the influence of access to transport on socio-economic transformation of selected rural areas in South- East, Nigeria. Survey/cross sectional design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of 2,850,543 people from 15 local government areas in selected rural areas of...

Road quality plays an important role, especially in rural areas where most poor households are situated. This study aims to calculate the Rural Access Index (RAI), an indicator of rural road quality (SDG indicator 9.1.1), at the district level, to evaluate the implementation of the Nawacita...

This paper investigates whether better access to markets through an improved road network plays a role in improving the profitability of firms in India. We construct a district-level market access index using Indian road network shapefiles, district boundaries, and nightlight raster images and...

This paper studies the impact of expected transport accessibility improvement on house prices. We identify the effect exploiting a quasi-natural experiment created by the approval and construction of the Ryfast tunnel system in Rogaland, Norway, which shortened the travelling time to the...

This paper analyses the impact that Spanish road construction had on local population growth between 1787 and 1857. We find that the increase in market access associated to road accessibility had a substantial effect on local population growth. The impact was substantially higher on the...

How have house prices evolved over the long-run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. Based on extensive data collection, we show that real house prices stayed constant from the 19th to the mid-20th century, but rose strongly during the second half of the...

We propose a theory-inspired measure of the accessibility of a city's center: the size of the surrounding area from which it can be reached within a specific time. Using publicly available optimal-routing software, we compute these "accessibility zones" for the 109 largest US and European...

We examine impacts of market integration on the development of American manufacturing, as railroads expanded through the latter half of the 19th century. Using new county-by-industry data from the Census of Manufactures, we estimate substantial impacts on manufacturing productivity from relative...

Infrastructure is viewed as a crucial ingredient to foster growth and productivity. Amid the post -- global financial crisis slowdown, Sub-Saharan Africa is in dire need to continue the growth momentum it experienced during the period of the Africa Rising narrative. An emerging consensus in the...

Rural Connectivity is the nerve centre of the economy. The linkage between urban and rural areas is possible through rural roads so rural roads are the arteries of any civilization. The importance of rural roads for agricultural development has been emphasised in the literature by various...

Rapid urbanization in developing countries enforces authorities to assess the sustainability and balanced development of urban cities from multiple perspectives and recommend appropriate solutions for policy and decision-makers. This study proposes spatial-based disaggregate accessibility to...

In the presence of agglomeration economies, the effects of a rural roads programme depend not only on the reduction in transportation costs, but also on the form of labour mobility. When financed by a poll tax on rural households, the wage will rise, accompanied by some return migration,...

To ensure adequate access to urban facilities, it is important for urban planners to achieve equity in the geographical arrangement of such facilities. For the evaluation of vertical spatial equity in the geographical organization of urban facilities, there is a requirement to examine whether...

No abstract avaLandmine contamination affects the lives of millions in many conflict-ridden countries long after the cessation of hostilities. Yet, little research exists on its impact on post-conflict recovery. In this study, we explore the economic consequences of landmine clearance in...

The literature lends empirical support for the idea that improvements to transport infrastructure lead to economic development. How and why the benefits of better transport differ between genders is less clear. This paper attempts to answer this question by combining a nonexperimental impact...

Transport connectivity in Cambodia is challenged by its geography and exposure to recurrent flooding. Flood events create severe disruptions in segments of the transport network that undermine access to health, education, and work opportunities as well as create barriers to economic growth....

The peripheral non-centrally located Prešov region (NUTS 3) from North-Eastern Slovakia (Fig. 1) is, according to the OECD methodology on urban-rural typology, a “significantly rural (intermediate) region”. Its territory consists of 13 smaller spatial units – predominantly and/or...

Since the urban-rural linkages mainly depend on the availability of the transportation facilities, any project on infrastructure development should concern the level of accessibility through the existing roads which should be developed. Most of the regional development programmes in post...