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Browsing by Subject "network expansion, economic evaluation, regional growth, rural development, economic development"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Mutual Causality in Road Network Growth and Economic Development
    (2016) Iacono, Michael J; Levinson, David M
    This paper investigates the relationship between the growth of road networks and regional development. We test for mutual causality between the growth of road networks (which are divided functionally into local roads and highways) and changes in county-level population and employment. We employ a panel data set containing observations of road mileage by type for all Minnesota counties over the period 1988 to 2007 to fit a model describing changes in road networks, population and employment. Results indicate that causality runs in both directions between population and local road networks, while no evidence of causality in either direction is found for networks and local employment. We interpret the findings as evidence of a weakening influence of road networks (and transportation more generally) on location, and suggest methods for refining the empirical approach described herein.
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    Rural Highway Expansion and Economic Development: Impacts on Private Earnings and Employment
    (2012) Iacono, Michael J; Levinson, David M
    With the interstate system substantially complete, the majority of new investment in highways is likely to take the form of selective capacity expansion projects in urban areas, along with incremental expansions and upgrades to expressway or freeway standards of existing intercity highway corridors. This paper focuses specifically on the latter type of project, rural highway expansions designed to connect smaller outstate cities and towns, and examines their effects on industry-level private earnings and local employment. We examine three case study projects in rural Minnesota and use panel data on local earnings and employment to estimate the impacts of the improvements. Our results indicate that none of the projects studied generated statistically significant increases in earnings or employment, a finding we attribute to the relatively small time savings associated with the projects and the maturity of the highway network. We suggest that for rural highway expansion projects, as with other types of transportation projects, user benefits should be a primary evaluation criterion rather than employment impacts.