Spatial Spillovers from Transport Infrastructure Investments

Transportation infrastructure projects, such as the US Interstate Highway network, involve some of the largest public investment programs undertaken. Recent years have seen the development of new theoretical models and the emergence of new sources of granular geographic information systems data on the transportation sector. These new theoretical models emphasize that the transportation network influences the spatial distribution of economic activity and that transport investments in one place spill over to affect other places through the transportation network and the resulting endogenous changes in the location of economic activity. At a time of renewed public policy interest in transportation infrastructure and rapid technological change in the transportation sector, there is an urgent need to deepen our understanding of spatial spillovers from transportation infrastructure investments.

To promote research on these issues, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, plans to convene an in-person research conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 9–10, 2027. The conference will be organized by NBER affiliates Myrto Kalouptsidi (Harvard University) and Stephen Redding (Stanford University). The conference will be concerned with developing improved methods for the evaluation of transport infrastructure investments, taking into account the industrial organization of the transport sector, the network structure of transport investments, the endogenous response of the spatial distribution of economic activity, and the resulting spatial spillovers. Papers that present theoretical or empirical research, as well as papers that combine the two, are welcome. Upload submissions by midnight EST on January 14, 2027.

Submissions from authors with and without NBER affiliations, from early career scholars, and from researchers from under-represented groups are welcome. Please do not submit published papers or those that will be published by April 2027. Decisions about which papers will be included on the program will be announced by February 12, 2027. The NBER will cover the cost of two authors per paper attending the research conference; all co-authors will be invited. Questions may be addressed to confer@nber.org.