Transportation Infraestructure Transition and Structural Transformation at the Subdistrict Level: The Impact on Argentine Agriculture between 1960 and 1988

Academic consensus on the positive impact of the expansion of the Argentine railway network on its agriculture led economy between 1890 and late 1910s is broad. After this network reached its peak in the 1950s, a transition in transportation infrastructure began, reducing the rail network and expanding paved roadways. This paper estimates the impact of this transition at a subdistrict level for specific but comprehensive variables of the Argentine agriculture between the early 60s and the late 80s. Since the treatments involved in the work are two, the empirical strategy relies on a modified fixed effects differences-in-differences model. Then, to achieve more solid conclusions, mean differences tests were run between groups with different characteristics, realizing closer comparisons to the traditional treatment-control contrast. The main findings reveals that, for the variables of interest, there is an enhancing effect in the presence of the two treatments (railways and paved roads) performing simultaneously in the subdistricts; likewise, eliminating a treatment from places that used to have both of them and contrasting these to districts that maintained both over time provides negative and robust results, veryfing the enhancing effect hypothesis. In another aspect, the results do not reveal the existance of significant effects in subdistrict agriculture from the treatment of deploying paved roads to places that previously did not have any means of transportation.