Estimando os impactos econômicos e sociais de uma nova rodovia no Brasil: questões metodológicas com aplicações empíricas

A crucial issue in a developing country in which highways are built through withdraws of resources from public budgets is determining in advance their economic and social consequences, so that public authorities can take appropriate decisions on resources allocation. In this paper we develop a method to estimate such impact quantitatively and apply it to a specific case in Brazil of duplication of BR 232, a public highway in the State of Pernambuco. The method relies on identification of major economic poles in the State and an econometric estimation of the impact on economic variables of changes in transport time of all the counties to these major cities. Variables studied include personal disposable income, employment, population and educational attainment, among others. A cost-benefit analysis is carried on using assumptions on taxes that could be collected from the additional income generated from gains of efficiency arising from cost reductions in transport. In this particular case, the method has released spatially reasonable results, which may be explained from economic intuition arising from observation of features of the counties in the State of Pernambuco.