The Welfare Effects of Transportation Infrastructure Improvements
The Welfare Effects of Transportation Infrastructure Improvements
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DOI：
10.3386/w25487
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发表时间：
2019-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Treb Allen;Costas Arkolakis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Treb Allen;Costas Arkolakis
我们建立了一个一般均衡地理框架来刻画交通基础设施投资的福利效应。我们解决了三个截然不同但相互交织的挑战：首先，我们对路线问题进行了分析描述，特别是任何两个相连地点之间的基础设施投资如何降低所有地点对之间的总贸易成本。其次，在一个标准的一般均衡地理结构中，我们描述了这种成本降低如何影响福利，其中市场低效率是由于集聚和分散溢出而产生的。最后，我们展示了我们的框架如何接受交通拥堵的分析特征，这在贸易成本和一般均衡经济系统之间创建了一个关键的-尽管容易处理的-反馈回路。我们将这些结果应用于计算改善美国国家公路网数千个路段的福利效应。我们发现了巨大但不同的福利效应，其中最大的收益集中在大都市地区和重要的贸易走廊沿线。
We develop a general equilibrium geographic framework to characterize the welfare effect of transportation infrastructure investments. We tackle three distinct but conflating challenges: First, we offer an analytical characterization of the routing problem and, in particular, how infrastructure investment between any two connected locations decreases the total trade costs between all pairs of locations. Second, we characterize how this cost reduction affects welfare within a standard general equilibrium geography setup where market inefficiencies arise due to agglomeration and dispersion spillovers. Finally, we show how our framework admits analytical characterizations of traffic congestion, which creates a critical – albeit tractable – feedback loop between trade costs and the general equilibrium economic system. We apply these results to calculate the welfare effects of improving each of the thousands of segments of the U.S. national highway network. We find large but heterogeneous welfare effects, with the largest gains concentrated in metropolitan areas and along important trading corridors.