Impact Of Transport Infrastructure Research Articles

Can Transport Infrastructure Improve Enterprise Energy Efficiency? Evidence From China

As an advanced social development capital, transportation plays a vital role in promoting regional development. Concurrently, the business activities of enterprises intimately relate to these transportation services. Utilizing road construction to improve the energy efficiency of enterprises, therefore, becomes a critical way to promote the transformation of the economy from high-speed development to high-quality development. Existing studies primarily focus on the impact of transport infrastructure on productivity, while few papers focus on the impact mechanism of transport infrastructure on energy efficiency. To delve deeper into the internal relationship between transportation and regional economic development, this paper explores the effect of transport infrastructure on energy utilization efficiency at the enterprise level. Based on the environmental pollution data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2001 to 2011, this paper analyzes the impact of transport infrastructure on enterprises’ energy efficiency and verifies the impact mechanism. The results show that the construction and improvement of urban road facilities can significantly improve firm energy utilization efficiency. Compared to low-energy consumption sectors, the impact of transportation infrastructure on the energy efficiency of high-energy consumption industry enterprises is notably more pronounced. A closer examination of the impact mechanism revealed that both industrial agglomeration and the cost effect are pivotal mechanisms through which transportation infrastructure affects enterprise energy efficiency. JEL Classification: D21, L91, Q40, Q51

The Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Manufacturing Energy Intensity: Micro Evidence from High-Speed Railway in China

This paper examines the potential of infrastructure improvements, particularly the operation of High-speed railway (HSR), to enhance the energy efficiency of firms. By regarding the operation of the China’s HSR as an exogenous shock, this paper relies on a difference-in-differences estimation to isolate the causal effect of the infrastructure improvement on manufacturing firms’ energy intensity. This paper finds that the operation of HSR has improved the manufacturing firms’ energy intensity through the catalyzing the proliferation of advanced management techniques, and this effect gradually decreases with the increase in distance between the firm and the HSR station. Moreover, HSR indirectly decreases energy intensity by fostering technological innovation, decreasing debt financing costs, and extending debt financing magnitude. The study also uncovers heterogeneous effects of HSR connectivity on manufacturing firms’ energy intensity, which are more pronounced in smaller cities and industries characterized by high concentration and low agglomeration. Furthermore, the impact of HSR connectivity on reducing energy intensity is more substantial in state-owned and larger firms compared to non-state-owned and smaller firms. JEL Classification: Q43, O13, R41, L60

Calibration and validation of a national transport computable general equilibrium model for economic impact assessment

Infrastructure investments are being undertaken to improve efficiency, economic activity, and growth. Therefore, policy makers are increasingly looking for modelling tools that can evaluate the impact of transport infrastructure on the economy, firms and households from the lens of economic activity and equity. We have developed a large scale national CGE model for India that is calibrated to economic data as well as validated to data observed from the Indian Railways. The novelty of this work lies in three main areas (1) The CGE model incorporates multi-modal transport with road and rail (2) It is the largest model developed so far with 33 regions, 29 industries, 312,530 kms of highways and 126,366 km of Railways (3) Validation of the CGE model. The CGE model was able to predict the tonnage freighted on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor to within 3.9 % accuracy. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Network (DFC) contributes a 2.94 % increase in the revenue for the railways as well as a 0.08 % increase in GDP. This implies that DFC can directly contribute INR 160 billion to the 2019 GDP. The CGE model distributed the benefits of faster and cheaper alternatives to the entire economy. This was observed during the evaluation of the road projects that were found to improve GDP, household welfare and rail revenue for rail, as well as improved equity.

The Road to Crime: An Unintended Consequence of the Interstate Highway System

Abstract The necessity to overhaul national infrastructure has become one of the key issues of US domestic policy in recent years. While the benefits of infrastructure spending are often straightforward, its unintended consequences are less well understood. This paper studies the impact of transportation infrastructure on local crime, focusing on the construction of the Interstate Highway System (IHS), the largest public works project in US history. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design and a county-by-year panel dataset spanning all US counties between 1960 and 1993, we find that a highway opening in a county led to an 8% rise in total index crime. This effect is driven by property crime (burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft), although some evidence suggests an increase in violent crime as well. Exploring potential mechanisms, we show that the positive effect of highways on crime is concentrated in counties with low pre-existing stock of police resources where increased connectivity may have raised the returns to crime. Moreover, we find that highway construction induced higher local employment, average firm size, and the local population size, thus increasing the returns to criminal activity, and ultimately the risk of victimisation in the newly-connected counties.

Transportation infrastructure, market integration and corporate innovation

ABSTRACT Innovation is the fundamental driving force that shapes micro-corporates’ competitiveness and promotes macroeconomic growth. In this paper, we systematically measure the stock of transportation infrastructure and the degree of market integration using China’s 30 provinces data from 2009 to 2019. On this basis, we investigate the impact of transportation infrastructure on corporate innovation. We find that transportation infrastructure contributes significantly to the quantity and quality of corporate innovation. The mechanism by which transportation infrastructure promotes corporate innovation is by influencing market integration. We further find that the channel through which transportation infrastructure promotes corporate innovation by affecting the integration of commodity markets is by broadening the size of corporate’ markets, while the channel through which transportation infrastructure promotes corporate innovation by affecting the integration of capital goods and labour markets is by improving the efficiency of resource allocation in factor markets. Our study provides new evidence on the effects of transportation infrastructure on economic growth.

Can transportation infrastructure improve resource misallocation? Evidence from China

Transportation infrastructure plays a crucial role in the free movement and rational allocation of resources. Utilizing provincial panel data from China spanning from 2000 to 2017, we employ a dynamic spatial Durbin model (DSDM) and a panel threshold model to analyze the impact of transportation infrastructure on resource misallocation. The findings are as follows: (1) Overall, transportation infrastructure serves to correct misallocations of capital and labor, exhibiting spatial effects; (2) Under the influence of spatial spillover effects, transportation infrastructure improves capital misallocation in neighboring regions, yet exacerbates labor misallocation; (3) The impact of transportation infrastructure on capital and labor misallocations shows regional heterogeneity; (4) Transportation infrastructure indirectly ameliorates resource misallocation through three pathways: opening up to external markets, urbanization, and industrial upgrading; (5) There is a threshold effect of transportation infrastructure on labor misallocation - it only improves labor misallocation when it reaches a certain scale.

The heterogeneous effects of transportation infrastructure on trade-embodied CO2 transfer: A multi-scale perspective

This paper investigates the heterogeneous impact of transportation infrastructure on trade-embodied CO2 emission (TEC) transfer. First, a multi-scale input-output (MSIO) model is developed to analyze the TEC from 31 Chinese provinces to 64 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. Then, the panel quantile regression and Markov Chain Monte Carlo optimization methods are applied to estimate the impact of transportation infrastructure on TEC, taking into account the provincial heterogeneity. The main results are as follows: (1) The TEC of China's exports to BRI countries amounted to 311.01 Mt CO2 annually from 2012 to 2016, with significant variations in TEC characteristics among different Chinese provinces. (2) China's transportation infrastructure network density (TID) predominantly exhibited a negative impact on exported TEC across various quantiles. Specifically, a 1% increase in TID was associated with a decrease in TEC ranging from approximately 0.25% to 3.99%. (3) As quantiles increased, the impact of transportation-converted turnover in China on TEC also rose, with a range of 0.66% to 0.94%. This study identifies the crucial regions and sectors of TEC from a ‘provincial-national-global’ multi-scale perspective, and implies that strengthening the construction of transportation infrastructure may improve the marginal effect of industrial structure transformation and environmental improvement brought about by trade activity.

Analysis of the Transportation Infrastructure in Sierra Leone and its Impact on Local Commodities into the Market

Transportation infrastructure plays a crucial role in the economic development and growth of nations, facilitating trade and investment opportunities by enabling the movement of people, services, and goods across markets and regions. However, developing countries such as Sierra Leone face significant challenges in providing suitable transportation infrastructure to support logistics management. Inadequate upkeep, financial constraints, and limited access to technology hinder the development of transportation infrastructure in Sierra Leone. Consequently, logistics management, which involves the planning, implementation, and control of the movement of goods and services, is adversely affected, leading to delayed deliveries, increased costs, and decreased competitiveness in the global market. This study aims to analyze the state of transportation infrastructure in Sierra Leone and its impact on local commodities. To assess the impact of transportation infrastructure on local commodity supply in Sierra Leone, a qualitative approach was employed. The findings from the study reveal that poor transportation infrastructure particularly limited cold storage facilities along transportation routes can lead to the spoilage of perishable goods such as fruits and vegetables. The findings were supported by four important recommendations: investment in road maintenance and expansion, modernisation of port facilities, development of intermodal transportation hubs, and the promotion of public-private partnerships.

Transportation infrastructure upgrading and green development efficiency: Empirical analysis with double machine learning method

In order to deal with the environmental problems such as pollution emissions and climate change, sustainable development in the field of transportation has gradually become a hot topic to all sectors of society. In addition, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of China's transportation is also an important issue in the new era. Thus, it is particularly important to correctly identify the green effect of high-speed rail. However, the traditional causal reasoning model faces several challenges such as ‘dimensional curse’ and multicollinearity. Based on the panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this study uses the double machine learning model to explore the impact of transportation infrastructure upgrading on the efficiency of urban green development in China. The research shows that the upgrading of transportation infrastructure can effectively improve the efficiency of urban green development by 4%. Service industry agglomeration and green innovation are verified as two mediating channels. Moreover, the synthetic difference in difference model is employed to evaluate the regional impact of high-speed rail, and finds that the regional impact of transportation policies often exceeds the impact of individual cities. We further apply the conclusions of this paper to the research at the micro enterprise level. Goodman-Bacon decomposition and a variety of robustness tests confirm the validity of our conclusions. The study's comprehensive empirical analysis not only validates the positive effects of transportation upgrades on green development, but also offers novel insights into the underlying mechanisms and policy implications of transportation upgrading.

ROADS TO RENEWAL: INVESTIGATING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF THE YAMUNA EXPRESSWAY ON ALIGARH-JEWAR REGION

Infrastructure projects often claim to transform the communities through which they cross. This study investigates the social and economic implications of the Yamuna Expressway in Indias Aligarh-Jewar region. Through the utilization of a combination of methods, the research examines the impact of this extensive infrastructure project on local job opportunities, trends in urban growth, and alterations in peoples means of living. The highway has greatly decreased commute times and has facilitated economic and social changes throughout the area. The results indicate that despite significant economic growth and infrastructure improvements, issues like environmental damage and social inequities also emerge. This study adds to the knowledge of how transport infrastructure affects regional development, providing important information for decision-makers and those involved in similar projects. It also examines the role of policy in managing these outcomes, emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and inclusive growth strategies. This paper contributes to understanding the dualistic impact of transport infrastructure on regional development, offering insights that are vital for policymakers and stakeholders engaged in similar infrastructure projects. KEYWORDS: Regional development, social dynamics, urbanization effects, socio-economic impact, environmental implications, government policies, road development, infrastructure development

Planned expansion of transportation infrastructure in Brazil has implications for the pattern of agricultural production and carbon emissions

High transportation costs have been a barrier to the expansion of agriculture in the interior of Brazil. To reduce transportation costs, Brazil launched the National Logistics Plan, aiming to expand its railway network by up to 91 % by 2035. Such a large-scale infrastructure investment raises concerns about its economic and environmental consequences. By combining geospatial estimation of transportation cost with a grid-resolving, multi-scale economic model that bridges fine-scale crop production with its trade and demand from national and global perspectives, we explore impacts of transportation infrastructure expansion on agricultural production, land use changes, and carbon emissions both locally and nationally in Brazil. We find that globally, the impacts on output and land use changes are small. However, within Brazil, the plan's primary impacts are impressive. PNL2035 results in the reduction of transportation costs by 8–23 % across states (depending on expansion's extent) in the interior Cerrado biome. This results in cropland expansion and increases in terrestrial carbon emissions in the Cerrado region. However, the increase in terrestrial carbon emissions in the Cerrado is offset by spillover effects elsewhere in Brazil, as crop production shifts away from the Southeast-South regions and accompanying change in the mix of transportation mode for farm products from roadway to more emission-efficient railway. Furthermore, we argue that the transportation infrastructure's impact on the enhanced mobility of labor and other agricultural inputs would further accentuate the regional shift in agricultural production and contribute to carbon emission mitigation. Upon its completion, PNL2035 is expected to result in the reduction of net national emissions by 1.8–30.7 million metric ton of CO2-equivalent, depending on the impacts on labor and purchased input mobility. We conclude that the omission of spillover effects due to infrastructure expansion can lead to misleading assessments of transport policies.

Transportation infrastructure and carbon emissions: New evidence with spatial spillover and endogeneity

Over the past two decades, China’s transportation infrastructure has expanded and emerged as a vital pillar of the national economy. In the context of commitments to carbon neutrality, it is imperative to assess how developing transportation infrastructure affects overall environmental goals. However, to the best of our knowledge, existing literature offers conflicting evidence about the overall impact of transportation infrastructure on carbon emissions. Using a novel spatial stochastic frontier model that accounts for spatial spillover and endogeneity, we find that previous research paradigms underestimated the contribution of transportation infrastructure to decarbonization: Instead of being a hindrance, the corrected effect substantially enhances decarbonization. These results remain robust in different weight matrices, instrumental variables, and distance function specifications. Furthermore, this study identifies economic agglomeration and technological innovation as key mechanisms of the decarbonization effect. From a regional perspective, we observe that western China shows the most pronounced emission reduction effect, followed by central China. In contrast, in eastern China, the transportation infrastructure does not support carbon emission reduction effectively. Therefore, policymakers should carefully consider the regional disparities in decarbonization and formulate distinct investment plans on transportation tailored to each region.

Transportation Infrastructure and Common Prosperity from the Perspective of Chinese-Style Modernization: Enabling Effects and Advancement Paths

“Common prosperity depends on development, and development comes first in transportation.” Achieving common prosperity is the essential requirement for Chinese-style modernization under the construction of a sustainable transportation power country. Based on China’s 30 provincial panel data from 2001 to 2021, this paper calculates the common prosperity index under modernization construction and uses the fixed-effect model and bootstrap mediation effect analysis method to examine the impact and promotion path of transportation infrastructure empowering common prosperity (mediating effect). The study found that transportation infrastructure has a significant enabling effect on common prosperity, and the higher the level of common prosperity, the stronger this effect. After a variety of robustness tests, the conclusion is still reliable. The specific path is that transportation infrastructure further strengthens its role in empowering common prosperity through the four intermediaries of economic growth, factor flow, industrial upgrading, and market expansion. Except for the complete intermediary effect of factor flow, the other intensity ratios are all at 65% or above. In addition, there is heterogeneity in the impact of transportation infrastructure on common prosperity, which is reflected in the significant effect in areas with large urban populations, eastern regions, and first-tier or former new first-tier cities. To this end, a quadrilateral orientation focusing on “economy, factors, industries, and markets” is proposed, with dense transportation networks and regional differentiation as the focus of sustainable transportation development, providing empirical support for promoting common prosperity.

Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Tourism Development: Analyzing Factors Influencing Visit Decisions and Economic Welfare Improvement

Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Tourism Development: Analyzing Factors Influencing Visit Decisions and Economic Welfare Improvement

Study on the Impact of Transport Infrastructure on Regional Economic Development

Study on the Impact of Transport Infrastructure on Regional Economic Development

Analysis of the Impact of Transport Infrastructure on Economic Growth in the Republic of Congo

Analysis of the Impact of Transport Infrastructure on Economic Growth in the Republic of Congo

Impact of transportation infrastructure and urbanization on environmental pollution: evidence from novel wavelet quantile correlation approach.

In terms of achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), the developing economies are facing many issues, and one of the key issues is environmental degradation. Being a developing economy, Pakistan is also experiencing thought-provoking impacts of global warming and still far away from the ideal track of sustainable development. For addressing environment-related issue and achieving the targets of SDGs, a policy-level reorientation might be necessary. In this view, this study investigates the impact of economic growth, transport infrastructure, urbanization, financial development, and renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions by using the data of Pakistan during 1990-2020. For this purpose, we use novel wavelet quantile correlation approach. The empirical results of wavelet quantile correlation approach demonstrate that economic growth, transport infrastructure, urbanization, and financial development are responsible for environmental pollution. Whereas, result also claims that renewable energy consumption is a useful tool for reducing environmental pollution in Pakistan. Moreover, the results of FMOLS approach show that 1% increase in economic growth, transportation infrastructure, urbanization, and financial development increases CO2 emissions by 0.240, 0.010, 0.478, and 0.102%, respectively. However, 1% increase in renewable energy usage reduces CO2 emission by 1.083%. Based on the empirical outcomes, this study proposes comprehensive policy framework for achieving the targets of SDG 7 (clean energy), SDG 8 (economic growth), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 13 (climate action).

Towards energy conservation by constructing more transportation infrastructure?: An endogenous stochastic frontier analysis framework

Whether constructing more transportation infrastructure can be helpful for the achievement of energy conservation is a long-running and debatable issue. To answer this question, the relationship between transportation infrastructure and energy efficiency must first be clarified. Nonetheless, the existence of the endogeneity problem poses a challenge to defining the relationship. In this paper, an endogenous stochastic frontier analysis method is used to investigate the influence of transportation infrastructure on energy efficiency. Based on the prefecture-city level panel data in China, we find that after addressing the endogeneity problem, the impact of transportation infrastructure on energy efficiency increases dramatically. Moreover, this impact is more pronounced in small-scale cities compared to large and medium-scale cities. Regardless of the measurement of transportation infrastructure, instrumental variable, or production function form, we get the similar conclusions, demonstrating the robustness of our findings. Additional simulation analysis shows that the energy conservation potential would be 1222–2935 million kilowatt hours if the level of transportation infrastructure could be optimized. We recommend accelerating the transportation infrastructure construction, particularly in the small-scale cities so as to boost the energy efficiency and achieve energy conservation targets.

Modeling of Passenger Flows in Agglomerations of Large Developing Cities (on the Example of Kyiv)

Based on the analysis of the fundamental impact of transport infrastructure, the city and the agglomeration are increasingly interpreted as a set of historically composed residential and industrial districts formed in the areas of interchanges of different modes of transport. On the example of the City of Kyiv, the modeling of passenger flows in agglomerations of large developing cities is considered, in order to implement the provisions of a modern urban environment, based on transport analysis of the urban area, with further forecasting of passenger flows on the street-road network and choice of main types of citywide passenger transport in the city. Based on the calculation of the population and passenger formation of transport areas, a model of the city's transport infrastructure is represented, the distribution of passenger traffic by modes of transport is estimated. The results of experimental studies of the intensity of existing passenger flows and models of their definition in the agglomeration of the most valuable city are determined. And the ways to solve the problems of conflict between the city and transport are proposed.

Impact of transportation infrastructure on amphibians

In recent decades, the alarming rate of amphibian disappearance has become a pressing environmental issue. The primary cause of this decline and extinction is habitat destruction, posing a significant threat to global biological diversity. This destruction is often the result of habitat fragmentation, wherein contiguous habitats are split into smaller, increasingly isolated patches. Transportation infrastructure, particularly roads, is a significant contributor to the fragmentation. Roads have a huge impact on economic development and ecology, connecting urban areas, rural areas and countries while promoting global economic development. However, at the same time, the accelerated road construction creates barriers, leading to increased wildlife death, habitat degradation and act as a contributor of species extinction. Amphibians are notably liable to road impact because of their unique behavior traits. The relationship between habitat fragmentation, accessible habitat, and populations is complex and multifaceted, with different species responding differently. Therefore, it is crucial to continue the exploration to counteract the problems of habitat fragmentation, the decline in amphibian abundance and biodiversity caused by the development of transportation infrastructure.