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Determinants of transport costs: Are they uniform across countries?

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  • Schürenberg-Frosch, Hannah

Abstract

The author shows with pooled OLS estimations based on transport margins from international social accounting data that investments in improved road infrastructure have the potential to significantly reduce transport costs. However, this result can only be clearly confirmed for industrial countries and is of primary importance for production and transportation of agricultural goods. For developing and transition countries, in contrast, the author finds other determinants such as weather conditions to be more important in determining transport costs. A key variable, especially in these countries, is corruption. Very high corruption has the potential to prevent positive effects from road infrastructure on transport costs or to even reverse them. This paper contributes to the literature on infrastructure investment by introducing and applying an internationally comparable measure of transport costs which can be calculated for a large and growing number of countries. The author concludes that investments in transport infrastructure can have substantial positive effects especially on agricultural production and the efficient marketing of agricultural products but only if specific additional conditions are given.

Suggested Citation

  • Schürenberg-Frosch, Hannah, 2012. "Determinants of transport costs: Are they uniform across countries?," Economics Discussion Papers 2012-54, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201254
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Eberhard-Ruiz, Andreas & Calabrese, Linda, 2018. "Trade facilitation, transport costs and the price of trucking services in East Africa," MPRA Paper 87150, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    infrastructure; transport networks; transport costs; agriculture; public investment; development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • R42 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government and Private Investment Analysis; Road Maintenance; Transportation Planning

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