IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/swe/wpaper/2014-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer Benefits of Infrastructure Services

Author

Listed:
  • Carmit Shwartz

    (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales)

  • W. Erwin Diewert

    (University of British Columbia and University of New South Wales)

  • Kevin J. Fox

    (School of Economics & Centre for Applied Economic Research, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales)

Abstract

This paper provides methodologies for evaluating consumer benefits of infrastructure services using potentially observable information. We define benefit measures for consumers and, using general principles from the index number literature, derive alternative first and second order approximations to these measures under the assumption of fixed prices for market goods and services. We then describe how the benefit measures and their associatedapproximations can be used in quantifying the economic benefits when prices are allowed to change endogenously as the provision of infrastructure services changes. In addition, under quite unrestrictive assumptions, a measure of welfare change based only on potentially observable data is derived.

Suggested Citation

  • Carmit Shwartz & W. Erwin Diewert & Kevin J. Fox, 2014. "Consumer Benefits of Infrastructure Services," Discussion Papers 2014-17, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
  • Handle: RePEc:swe:wpaper:2014-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/RePEc/papers/2014-17.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boisso, Dale & Grosskopf, Shawna & Hayes, Kathy, 2000. "Productivity and efficiency in the US: effects of business cycles and public capital," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 663-681, December.
    2. Aschauer, David Alan, 1989. "Is public expenditure productive?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 177-200, March.
    3. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    4. Seitz, Helmut, 1995. "The Productivity and Supply of Urban Infrastructures," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 29(2), pages 121-141, May.
    5. Paul A. Samuelson, 1953. "Prices of Factors and Goods in General Equilibrium," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 1-20.
    6. Diewert, Walter E & Wales, Terence J, 1987. "Flexible Functional Forms and Global Curvature Conditions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 43-68, January.
    7. John G. Fernald, 1999. "Roads to Prosperity? Assessing the Link between Public Capital and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 619-638, June.
    8. David Albouy, 2008. "Are Big Cities Bad Places to Live? Estimating Quality of Life across Metropolitan Areas," NBER Working Papers 14472, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Haughwout, Andrew F., 2002. "Public infrastructure investments, productivity and welfare in fixed geographic areas," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 405-428, March.
    10. Morrison, Catherine J & Schwartz, Amy Ellen, 1996. "State Infrastructure and Productive Performance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1095-1111, December.
    11. Seitz, Helmut, 1994. "Public capital and the demand for private inputs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 287-307, June.
    12. W. Erwin Diewert, 2005. "Index Number Theory Using Differences Rather Than Ratios," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 311-360, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mamuneas, Theofanis P. & Ishaq Nadiri, M., 1996. "Public R&D policies and cost behavior of the US manufacturing industries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 57-81, December.
    2. Atsushi Tsuneki, 2002. "Shadow-Pricing Interpretation of the Pigovian Rule for the Optimal Provision of Public Goods: A Note," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(1), pages 93-104, January.
    3. Ernst R. Berndt & Bengt Hansson, 1991. "Measuring the Contribution of Public Infrastructure Capital in Sweden," NBER Working Papers 3842, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joeé Emilio Boscá & Francisco Javier Escribá & María José Murgui, 2002. "The Effect of Public Infrastructure on the Private Productive Sector of Spanish Regions," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 301-326, May.
    5. Nigel Spence & Antonis Rovolis, 2002. "Duality theory and cost function analysis in a regional context: the impact of public infrastructure capital in the Greek regions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 36(1), pages 55-78.
    6. Torstein Bye & Alexandra Katz, 1995. "Returns to Publicly Owned Transport Infrastructure Investment . A Cost Function/Cost Share Approach for Norway, 1971-1991," Discussion Papers 154, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    7. W. Erwin Diewert, 1986. "Export Supply and Import Demand Functions: A Production Theory Approach," NBER Working Papers 2011, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Bruno Jullien & Frederic Rychen & Antoine Soubeyran, 2000. "Local Public Investment and Competition for a Firm," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1400, Econometric Society.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brueckner, Jan K. & Picard, Pierre M., 2015. "Where and when to invest in infrastructure," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 123-134.
    2. Jeffrey Thompson, 2010. "Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England: Skills, Infrastructure, and Tax Incentives," Published Studies priorities_september7_per, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    3. Jason Timmins, 2005. "Is Infrastructure Productive? Evaluating the effects of specific infrastructure projects on firm productivity within New Zealand," Working Papers 05_14, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    4. Lall,Somik V. & Gun Wang, Hyoung & Deichmann, Uwe, 2010. "Infrastructure and City Competitiveness in India," WIDER Working Paper Series 022, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Barabas, György & Kitlinski, Tobias & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Schmidt, Torsten & Siemers, Lars-H. & Brilon, Werner, 2010. "Verkehrsinfrastrukturinvestitionen: Wachstumsaspekte im Rahmen einer gestaltenden Finanzpolitik. Endbericht - Januar 2010. Forschungsprojekt im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen. Projektnumm," RWI Projektberichte, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, number 72601.
    6. Jerome Segura III, 2017. "The effect of state and local taxes on economic growth: A spatial dynamic panel approach," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 96(3), pages 627-645, August.
    7. Alfredo M. Pereira & Jorge M. Andraz, 2013. "On The Economic Effects Of Public Infrastructure Investment: A Survey Of The International Evidence," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 1-37, December.
    8. Robert Fenge & Matthias Wrede, 2007. "EU Financing and Regional Policy: Vertical Fiscal Externalities when Capital is Mobile," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 63(4), pages 457-476, December.
    9. Valter Di Giacinto & Giacinto Micucci & Pasqualino Montanaro, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Impact of Infrastructures: A Literature Review and Empirical Analysis on the Case of Italy," QA - Rivista dell'Associazione Rossi-Doria, Associazione Rossi Doria, issue 1, March.
    10. Boopen Seetanah, 2011. "Optimal endowments of transport investment: an empirical analysis for mauritius," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 827-838, May.
    11. Jeremy B. Rudd, 2000. "Assessing the productivity of public capital with a locational equilibrium model," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-23, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Andreas Stephan, 2003. "Assessing the contribution of public capital to private production: Evidence from the German manufacturing sector," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 399-417.
    13. Haughwout, Andrew F., 2002. "Public infrastructure investments, productivity and welfare in fixed geographic areas," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 405-428, March.
    14. Kolomak, E., 2011. "Efficiency of Infrastructure Capital in Russia," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, issue 10, pages 74-93.
    15. Stephen P. A. Brown & Kathy J. Hayes & Lori L. Taylor, 2002. "State and local policy, factor markets and regional growth," Working Papers 0202, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    16. Duran-Fernandez, Roberto & Santos, Georgina, 2014. "An empirical approach to public capital, infrastructure, and economic activity: A critical review," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 3-16.
    17. Brown, Stephen P. A. & Hayes, Kathy J. & Taylor, Lori L., 2003. "State and Local Policy, Factor Markets, and Regional Growth," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 33(1), pages 40-60.
    18. Li, Zhigang & Chen, Yu, 2013. "Estimating the social return to transport infrastructure: A price-difference approach applied to a quasi-experiment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 669-683.
    19. Kim, Hyungtai & Ahn, Sanghoon & Ulfarsson, Gudmundur F., 2021. "Impacts of transportation and industrial complexes on establishment-level productivity growth in Korea," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 89-97.
    20. Haughwout, Andrew F., 1998. "Aggregate Production Functions, Interregional Equilibrium, and the Measurement of Infrastructure Productivity," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 216-227, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer benefits; infrastructure services; first order approximation; second order approximation; exible functional forms; index number theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:swe:wpaper:2014-17. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Hongyi Li (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/senswau.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.