Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure
Name
aer.20101199.pdf
Description
Published version
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758.12 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
08181feb2fab217d8d309657bbd10c0a
Author(s)
Donaldson, Dave
Date Issued
April 2018
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Donaldson, Dave, "Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure." American Economic Review 108, 4-5 (April 2018): 899-934 doi. 10.1257/aer.20101199 ©2018 Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects, and what explains these benefits? This paper uses archival data from colonial India to investigate the impact of India's vast railroad network. Guided by four results from a general equilibrium trade model, I find that railroads: (1) decreased trade costs and interregional price gaps; (2) increased interregional and international trade; (3) increased real income levels; and (4) that a sufficient statistic for the effect of railroads on welfare in the model accounts well for the observed reduced-form impact of railroads on real income in the data. ©2018 American Economic Association. All rights reserved.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20101199
