Economic Infrastructure Development Research Articles

PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL MANUFACTURERS

The role of public infrastructure in economic development and growth is examined and reported here. Specific attention is paid to the importance of infrastructure to small rural manufacturing firms in upper New England and Wisconsin. Study results suggest that while infrastructure is important to small manufacturing firms, other community attributes such as overall community attitudes toward change and the underlying forces of firm start-ups are more important. While adequate investments in infrastructure may be necessary for economic development and growth, it is not sufficient.

Transforming South Africa's cities: Prospects for the economic development of urban townships

This article identifies and evaluates the range of strategies being used to generate economic activity close to and within townships, focusing on the three metropolitan areas of Gauteng, the Durban Functional Region and metropolitan Cape Town. After placing townships in the context of the larger city and the overall strategy of local economic development, the article examines the various types of strategies that have been proposed to stimulate and support economic activity: the currently dominant spatial strategies, the provision of services infrastructure, the development of economic infrastructure, small business support services, and public works.

Factor prices, factor substitution, and the relative demand for telecommunications across US industries

Often derived demand for telecommunications services is analyzed by means of highly aggregated frameworks. Such frameworks have sharp limitations in their capacity to provide useful information about interrelated factor demands and, in particular, the interrelationships between telecommunications and other factor inputs. Without such information it is impossible to address comprehensively issues of concern to policy makers regarding the relationship between telecommunications infrastructure and economic development, In this paper, a model involving a comprehensive set of sectoral translog cost equations has been applied to study various hypotheses concerning interrelationships between the derived demand for telecommunications and the demand for other factor inputs, Specifically, the empirical findings suggest that the nominal sectoral telecommunications cost shares are not positively related to the level of wages. This finding is opposite to a recent finding reported for the Italian economy. The results also suggest that increases in the price of labor tend to drive down the nominal cost shares of telecommunications. Finally, the study indicates that increases in the price of capital will tend to increase nominal sectoral telecommunications cost shares because of the existence of strong substitution possibilities. These findings have important implications for the role of telecommunications infrastructure in economic development.

Missing networks in European transport and communications

The paper reports on missing networks in Europe's transport and communication infrastructure. Starting from the keyrole of infrastructure for economic development, it is argued that unless urgent action is taken to fill the gaps they threaten to reduce seriously the competitive advantages that will be gained from the single European market. Six examples of missing networks are presented in this study. They relate to combined freight transport, the European airline system, highspeed rail networks, European common carriage, inland waterways and telecommunication. The logic behind these missing networks is discussed and it is concluded that the problems can only be solved if one has a pentagon of concerns, rather than just a one‐ or two‐dimensional infrastructure planning policy.

Coalitions in Oil Monarchies: Kuwait and Qatar

In recent decades Kuwait and Qatar have experienced a radical but apparently smooth transition from pearls to petroleum, poverty to prosperity. Oil revenues have fueled the development of economic infrastructures, new welfare systems, and radically different and at least materially better lives for their inhabitants. Yet these rapid changes have been accompanied by remarkable political continuity at the apex of the systems: these two countries continue to be ruled by centuries old tribal elites. Despite the many coups and populist uprisings throughout the Third World and despite the obituaries regularly written for these regimes, their rulers have survived the arrival and departure of Britain, the trials of independence, and now the new demands of oil wealth. This continuity is the result of oil and on closer examination hides more fundamental change. Continuity at the very top of the political system, while real, has been accompanied, since the development of oil in the 1940s, by the withdrawal from formal political life of the merchants, the group which historically pressed its claims most effectively on the state. Merchant claims have not been put forward because of a tacit deal between the rulers and the trading families, a trade of wealth for formal power. In effect, the merchants renounced their historical claim to participate in decision making. In exchange, the amirs guaranteed them a large share of the oil revenues. Where economic elites once entered politics to protect their economic interests, after oil merchants left the realm of formal politics to preserve those interests. The merchants' withdrawal has also been accompanied by the development of new ties between the amir and the ruling family, whose political role has expanded, and between the amir and the national population, through social services and transfers. Oil revenues preserved continuity at the apex of the political system by forcing the breakdown of the old ruling coalition and catalyzing the formation of a new pattern of political control. Oil in fact introduced important changes in the ruling coalition even as it preserved continuity at the very top of the political system. The political changes that occurred-the breakdown in the old ruling coalition binding the trading families and the amir and its replacement by a new set of elite arrangements--were not the result of idiosyncratic local factors, but a patterned response to oil that occurs repeatedly. The same broad transformations that occurred in Kuwait were repeated in Qatar. Variations on the basic pattern appear in all the oil dependent states: in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the rulers have gradually weakened their old economic allies, replacing their economic and political dependence on domestic allies with a new dependence on foreign allies. The new arrangements, however, are only transitional adaptations, for they carry within them the seeds of future change. Distributive policies designed to ensure domestic peace have inadvertently created relatively large and complex state administrations, distributive states, unusual in that they emerged from the imperative to

Alaska's Infrastructure and Limits to Growth

Economic development and population movement in the United States have historically been linked to the development of infrastructure—for transportation and for power. Much of Alaska is currently undeveloped; thus, a critical question in guiding Alaska's future is the extent to which a similar link exists here. In addition, infrastructure for economic development and diversification competes for funds with infrastructure for basic human needs—water, sewer, etc. Thus, the state's ability to use infrastructure to promote development is also limited by budget constraints. We conclude that infrastructure is critical for the development of many of Alaska's resources. However, much of the required supporting infrastructure is only marginally useful for other purposes. Pipelines, roads, bridges, and port developments are required to move products to market, but Alaska is ill‐suited for many of the small‐scale developments that accompanied infrastructure extension in the United States. And only by geographical chance can two large‐scale resource deposits share infrastructure. However, improvements justified by a megadeposit may allow development of other smaller, nearby deposits.