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

本论文从历史的角度考察了基础设施民营化的内涵。它调查了18世纪英国发生的一次制度变革，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称为收费公路信托基金的私人组织。这些组织的受托人通过对道路使用者征收受监管的通行费表来为道路改善提供资金，而地方政府的受托人通过地方税收为道路改善提供资金。论文的第一部分将确定这种形式的私有化是否增加了18世纪英国的道路支出水平。它将使用这笔赠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的支出水平与相应的收费公路信托。论文的研究还发展和检验了一个理论，该理论解释了在18世纪英国的背景下，私有化为什么提高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，并认为这些外部性限制了分散制度下的投资。然后，它认为，征收通行费导致道路改善的成本和收益内部化，并最终鼓励更多的投资。除了关注外部性，该理论还强调将“控制权”转移给私人参与者，集中利益于基础设施的改善。它辩称，土地所有者和实业家游说建立收费公路信托基金的权利，以便他们能够确保进行免费的交通投资。论文的第二部分将测算18世纪英国交通基础设施投资对经济增长的贡献。将收集几条不同高速公路的运输成本数据，这将有助于估计道路运输部门的生产率增长。然后，该项目将对该部门的公路投资和生产率增长之间的关系进行计量经济学评估。接下来，它将扩大分析范围，并表明收费公路信托基金的形成与其他地方投资之间存在关联，包括土地改良和工厂和蒸汽机的采用。这将支持基础设施投资和资本投资之间存在互补关系的假设。最后，该项目将调查18世纪交通投资与地租和工资增长之间的计量经济学关系，并在这一时期英国经济的背景下对这些投资的经济价值进行另一次评估。。

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. .