Does America Really Need More Infrastructure? Lessons from the Debate About the Role of the Railroads in the Development of the American West

This paper compares and contrasts two debates about the role ofinfrastructure in American economic growth and development. Thecontemporary policy debate revolves around the extent to which theobserved decline in public works investment since 1960, measured asa proportion of GNP, has been a cause of the coincident decline ofproductivity over the same period. An earlier debate in theeconomic history field revolved around whether the railroads werequot;indispensablequot; to America's economic growth and how the buildingof a rail network affected the shape of that growth. In many waysthe contemporary policy exchange is covering much of the sameground covered by analysts studying the railroads