The impact of transport infrastructure on firms’ location decision: A meta-analysis based on a systematic literature review

Abstract

This paper proposes to explore the existing literature on the impact of transportation infrastructure on firms’ location decision. Using three distinct databases (EconLit, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and Web of Science), the research identifies 338 potential papers, with 52 of them retained for the analysis. The paper presents a complete descriptive analysis of the selected papers, as well as a meta-analysis based on all the reported statistics. From a quantitative perspective, the meta-analysis results suggest a more positive and significant impact of transport infrastructure on finance, insurance, and real estate activities (FIRE). The meta-analysis also highlights the importance of taking into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of location activities when evaluating the impact of transport infrastructure. The omission of one of those dimensions might lead to overestimation of the effect, and therefore bias in the observed results.