Economic Growth and Infrastructure Gap in Latin America

This paper analyses the recent trends in infrastructures of Latin American, with the aim of addressing the problem of measuring and evaluating the infrastructural gap. Departing from the recent literature on economic growth and public finance, we defined the infrastructure need of a country through a model of demand. The use of a large dataset (121 countries spanned over 1960-1999) made it possible to estimate the optimal level of infrastructure provision. To conclude, a comparative inter-regional analysis of the infrastructural gap between the Latin American, East Asian, OECD and middle income countries was conducted to check if the reduction in infrastructural investment was caused by the evolution of infrastructure needs, or if it was due to a widespread inefficiency caused by the underestimation of actual needs.