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

本文从历史的角度考察了基础设施私有化的影响。它调查了发生在18世纪英国的一项制度变革，当时提供道路投资的责任从地方政府单位转移到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改善，而他们在地方政府的同行则通过地方税收来资助改善。论文的第一部分将确定这种私有化形式是否增加了18世纪英国的道路支出水平。它将使用这笔拨款提供的资金来收集收费公路信托公司和地方政府的投资行为数据。然后，它将使用这些数据来比较私有化发生后地方政府与相应收费公路信托的支出水平。本文的研究还发展和检验了一个理论，解释了为什么私有化在18世纪英国的背景下增加了基础设施投资水平。它强调了司法管辖区间交通造成的外部性，并指出这些外部性限制了分散体制下的投资。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”转移给专注于基础设施改善的私人行为者。它认为，土地所有者和实业家为获得建立收费公路信托基金的权利进行了游说，这样他们就可以确保免费的交通投资得到实施。论文的第二部分将估计交通基础设施投资对十八世纪英国经济增长的贡献。将收集几条不同公路的运输费用数据，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道路投资与该部门生产率增长之间的关系。接下来，它将扩大分析范围，并表明收费公路信托公司的成立与其他地方投资（包括土地改善和工厂和蒸汽机的采用）之间存在相关性。这将为基础设施投资与资本投资之间存在互补关系的假设提供支持。最后，该项目将调查18世纪交通投资与土地租金和工资增长之间的计量经济关系，为这一时期英国经济背景下这些投资的经济价值提供另一种评估。

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. .