The Impact of Transport Infrastructure on Productivity in Canada 2022

Aschauer (1989) hypothesized that the decline in public infrastructure investment in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States could be the cause of the productivity slowdown observed during the same period. [...] The mode of transport appears to also influence the size of the estimates with roads having the largest impact on output and airports, the smallest. [...] The results from the estimation of the meta-regression models support the hypothesis of the authors regarding the use of panel data estimators. [...] The inclusion of fixed effects in the model does lower the magnitude of the coefficients, indicating that provincial characteristics might play a role in the relationship between transportation infrastructure and output. [...] In the construction sector, the results of the dynamic models indicate no impact of transportation infrastructure, which is in line with the results of the static fixed effects and differenced models.