Infrastructure endowment and investment as determinants of regional growth in the European Union

Riccardo Crescenzi and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

No 8/2008, EIB Papers from European Investment Bank, Economics Department

Abstract: This paper analyses the role of infrastructure endowment and investment in the genesis of regional growth in the European Union. It assesses the economic effects of the existence and improvement of transport networks in light of their interactions with innovation and local socio-economic conditions. The analysis accounts for spatial interactions between different regions in the form of spillovers and network externalities. The regression results highlight the impact of infrastructural endowment on regional economic performance, but also the weak contribution of additional investment. Regions having good transport infrastructure endowment and being well connected to regions with similar good endowments tend to grow faster. However, investment in infrastructure within a region or in neighbouring regions seems to leave especially peripheral regions more vulnerable to competition. Furthermore, the positive impact of infrastructure endowment on growth tends to wane quickly and is weaker than that of, for example, the level of human capital.

Keywords: Economic growth; infrastructure; transport network; investment; innovation; spillovers; regions; endowment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R11 R12 R42 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2008-07-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-fdg, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eib.org/attachments/efs/eibpapers/eibpa ... _n02_en.pdf#page=104 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Infrastructure endowment and investment as determinants of regional growth in the European Union (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:eibpap:2008_008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EIB Papers from European Investment Bank, Economics Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Polyxeni Kanelliadou ().