This paper takes a first look at the trade effects of China's Belt and Road Initiative, also referred to as the New Silk Road, on the 71 countries potentially involved. The initiative consists of several infrastructure investment projects to improve the land and maritime transportation in the...

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in...

The distribution of transport infrastructure across space is the outcome of deliberate government planning that reflects a desire to unlock the welfare gains from regional economic integration. Yet, despite being one of the oldest government activities, the economic forces shaping the endogenous...

Poor domestic transportation infrastructure in developing countries is often cited as an important impediment for accessing international markets. Yet, evidence on how transportation infrastructure improvements affect the volume and composition of exports is scarce. Drawing on the large-scale...

This paper endogenizes the spatial distribution of infrastructure investment and transportation costs. Transportation costs between two addresses depend on cumulative infrastructure investment. In a continuous space setting with several independent countries or regions, consumers demand domestic...