Highways and Spatial Location within Cities : Evidence from India

Ghani, Ejaz ; Goswami, Arti Grover ; Kerr, William R.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank

关键词: ROADS;    HIGHWAY NETWORK;    SPATIAL ECONOMICS;    BUSINESS CLUSTER;    INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1093/wber/lhw022
RP-ID  :  140515

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The authors investigate the impact ofthe golden quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the spatialorganization and efficiency of manufacturing activity. TheGQ project upgraded the quality and width of 3,633 miles ofroads in India. The authors use a difference-in-differenceestimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts basedupon their distance from the highway system. For theorganized portion of the manufacturing sector, we find thatGQ led to improvements in both urban and rural areas ofnon-nodal districts located 0 to 10 kilometers from GQ.These higher entry rates and increases in plant productivityare not present in districts 10 to 50 kilometers away. Theentry effects are stronger in rural areas of districts, butthe differences between urban and rural areas are modestrelative to the overall effect. For the unorganized sector,we do not find material effects from the GQ upgrades ineither setting. These findings suggest that in the timeframes that we can consider the first five to seven yearsduring and after upgrades, the economic effects of majorhighway projects contribute modestly to the migration of theorganized sector out of Indian cities but are unrelated tothe increased urbanization of the unorganized sector.