IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/econjl/v128y2018i609p541-575.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Party Connections, Interest Groups and the Slow Diffusion of Infrastructure: Evidence from Britain's First Transport Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Bogart

Abstract

Economic and political interests often block or delay infrastructure improvements. This article examines their effects by studying Britain's river navigation improvements in the early 1700s – a subject of intense lobbying in parliament. It shows that stronger party connections and influence in neighbouring areas likely to oppose or support projects affected whether a town got a river navigation act. Their estimated effects are comparable to geography and town economic characteristics in magnitude and help explain whether towns were blocked from getting navigation improvements. The findings address institutions following the Glorious Revolution and broader issues concerning infrastructure, technology diffusion and political connections.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Bogart, 2018. "Party Connections, Interest Groups and the Slow Diffusion of Infrastructure: Evidence from Britain's First Transport Revolution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 541-575, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:econjl:v:128:y:2018:i:609:p:541-575
    DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12432
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12432
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecoj.12432?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roberto Bonfatti & Giovanni Facchini & Alexander Tarasov & Gian Luca Tedeschi & Cecilia Testa, 2021. "Pork, infrastructure and growth: Evidence from the Italian railway expansion," Discussion Papers 2021-04, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).
    2. Eric Melander, 2020. "Transportation Technology, Individual Mobility and Social Mobilisation," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 471, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Farbmacher, Helmut & Tauchmann, Harald, 2021. "Linear fixed-effects estimation with non-repeated outcomes," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 03/2021, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics, revised 2021.
    4. Bogart, Dan, 2022. "Infrastructure and institutions: Lessons from history," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. Tauchmann, Harald, 2019. "Fixed-effects estimation of the linear discrete-time hazard model: An adjusted first-differences estimator," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 09/2019, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:econjl:v:128:y:2018:i:609:p:541-575. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.