TY  - JOUR
AU  - Banerjee,Abhijit
AU  - Duflo,Esther
AU  - Qian,Nancy
TI  - On the Road: Access to Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Growth in China
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17897
PY  - 2012
Y2  - March 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17897
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17897.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Abhijit Banerjee
MIT
Department of Economics
E52-252d
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8855
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: banerjee@mit.edu

Esther Duflo
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-252G
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617/258-7013
Fax: 617/253-6915
E-Mail: eduflo@mit.edu

Nancy Qian
Department of Economics
Yale University
27 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520-8269
E-Mail: nancy.qian@yale.edu
AB  - This paper estimates the effect of access to transportation networks on regional economic outcomes in China over a twenty-period of rapid income growth. It addresses the problem of the endogenous placement of networks by exploiting the fact that these networks tend to connect historical cities. Our results show that proximity to transportation networks have a moderate positive causal effect on per capita GDP levels across sectors, but no effect on per capita GDP growth. We provide a simple theoretical framework with empirically testable predictions to interpret our results. We argue that our results are consistent with factor mobility playing an important role in determining the economic benefits of infrastructure development.
ER  -