How Relevant Is Infrastructure to Growth in East Asia?

Seethepalli, Kalpana ; Bramati, Maria Caterina ; Veredas, David

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO INFRASTRUCTURE;    ACCOUNTING;    ADB;    AIR;    AIR TRANSPORT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4597
RP-ID  :  WPS4597

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper seeks to shed some light onthe extent to which infrastructure sub-sectors - energy,telecommunications, water supply, sanitation, and transport- contributed to growth in East Asia during 1985-2004. Italso attempts to provide additional insights on whether therelationship between infrastructure and growth depends onfive additional variables: the degree of privateparticipation in infrastructure, the quality of governance,the extent of rural-urban inequality in access toinfrastructure services, country income levels, as well asgeography. The findings show that greater stocks ofinfrastructure were indeed associated with higher growth.However, a more nuanced look at the sensitivity ofinfrastructure impacts on the five additional variablesyields different results, with some sectors supportingconventional expectations and others yielding mixed orcounter-intuitive results. In particular, the telecom andsanitation sectors yield statistically significant resultssupporting the a priori hypotheses; electricity and waterinfrastructure provide mixed results; and roadinfrastructure consistently contradicts a prioriexpectations. The results are consistent with thewidely-accepted idea in policy research that infrastructureplays an important role in promoting growth, as well as withthe viewpoint that certain countries' endowmentsinfluence the growth-related impacts of infrastructure.