The Role of Space in Public Capital Research

The role of public capital in the economy is an emerging research area with theoretical significance and societal and policy relevance. Several academic disciplines and public institutions are regular contributors to this research field. The range of findings of these studies extends from virtually no role to a very strong role for public capital in the economy. Reconciling the varied and sometimes contradictory results has not been a high priority among researchers. The lack of attention to spatial forces, an issue gaining attention only relatively recently, also has been troublesome. This article reviews public capital research along three primary dimensions: the dependent variable, scale of analysis, and attention to spatial processes. The authors emphasize scale and space as among the most important but least discussed differences among public capital studies and then focus on the nature of the economic processes at work and detectable at different scales of analysis.