Doctoral Dissertation Research: Creating Property Rights Over the King's Highway -- Institutional Change and the Development of Road Infrastructure in Early Modern England.

博士论文研究：在国王公路上创建产权——现代早期英格兰的制度变迁和道路基础设施的发展。

• 批准号: 0136749
• 负责人: Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
• 金额: $ 0.7万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-02-15 至 2003-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0136749&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Creating; Property

This dissertation research examines the implications of infrastructure privatization from a historical perspective. It investigates an institutional change that took place in eighteenth century England, in which responsibility for providing road investment was transferred from local units of government to private organizations known as turnpike trusts. The trustees of these organizations funded road improvements by levying a regulated schedule of tolls on the users of the road, while their counterparts in local government funded improvements with local taxes. The first part of the dissertation will determine whether this form of privatization increased the level of road expenditure in eighteenth century England. It will use the funds provided by this grant to collect data on the investment behavior of turnpike trusts and local governments. Then it will use this data to compare the expenditure levels of local government with the corresponding turnpike trust after a privatization occurs. The dissertation research also develops and tests a theory that explains why privatization increased the level of infrastructure investment in the context of eighteenth century England. It emphasizes the externalities created by inter-jurisdictional traffic and suggests that these externalities limited investment under the decentralized system. It then argues that the levying of tolls resulted in the internalization of the costs and benefits of road improvement and ultimately encouraged more investment. Besides focusing on externalities, the theory also emphasizes the transfer of 'control-rights' to private actors with a concentrated interest in infrastructure improvement. It argues that landowners and industrialists lobbied for the right to establish turnpike trusts so that they could ensure that complimentary transportation investments were undertaken. The second part of the dissertation will estimate the contribution of transportation infrastructure investment to economic growth in England during the eighteenth century. Data on transportation costs will be collected for several different highways, which will contribute to an estimate of productivity growth in the road transportation sector. The project will then econometrically estimate the relationship between road investment and productivity growth in this sector. Next, it will broaden the analysis and show that there is a correlation between the formation of turnpike trusts and other local investments, including land improvements and the adoption of factories and steam engines. This will lend support to the hypothesis that there is a complimentary relationship between infrastructure investment and capital investment. Finally, the project will investigate the econometric relationship between transportation investment and growth in land rents and wages during the eighteenth century, providing yet another assessment of the economic value of these investments in the context of the British economy in this period. .

本论文从历史的角度研究了基础设施私有化的含义。 它调查了发生在18世纪英格兰的一次制度变革，在这一变革中，提供道路投资的责任从地方政府单位转移到了被称为收费公路信托的私人组织。 这些组织的受托人通过向道路使用者征收规定的通行费来资助道路的改善，而地方政府的对应方则通过地方税收资助道路的改善。 论文的第一部分将确定这种形式的私有化是否增加了世纪英国的道路支出水平。 它将利用这笔赠款提供的资金收集收费公路信托和地方政府投资行为的数据。 然后，它将使用这些数据来比较地方政府的支出水平与相应的收费公路信托公司在私有化发生后。 论文的研究还发展和测试了一个理论，解释了为什么私有化增加了基础设施投资水平的背景下，十八世纪英国。 它强调了管辖区之间的交通所造成的外部性，并认为这些外部性限制了分散系统下的投资。 然后，它认为，征收通行费导致了道路改善的成本和收益的内部化，并最终鼓励了更多的投资。 除了关注外部性之外，该理论还强调将“控制权”转移给对基础设施改善感兴趣的私人参与者。 它争辩说，土地所有者和实业家为建立收费公路信托的权利进行游说，以便他们能够确保进行免费的运输投资。论文的第二部分将对英国世纪交通基础设施投资对经济增长的贡献进行评估。 将收集几条不同公路的运输成本数据，这将有助于估计公路运输部门的生产率增长。 然后，该项目将从计量经济学角度估计公路投资与该部门生产率增长之间的关系。 接下来，将扩大分析范围，说明收费公路信托的形成与土地改良、工厂和蒸汽机的采用等其他地方投资之间的相关性。 这将支持基础设施投资与资本投资之间存在互补关系的假设。 最后，该项目将调查十八世纪交通投资与地租和工资增长之间的计量经济关系，在英国经济的背景下对这些投资的经济价值进行另一种评估。 .