【摘要】How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects,and what explains these benefits? This paper uses archival data from colonial India to investigate the impact of India’s vast railroad net-work. Guided by four results from a general equilibrium trade model,I find that railroads: (1) decreased trade costs and interregional price gaps; (2) increased interregional and international trade;(3) increased real income levels; and (4) that a sufficient statistic for the effect of railroads on welfare in the model accounts well for the observed reduced-form impact of railroads on real income in the data.

【文献来源】Dave Donaldson .Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure .American Economic Review ,2018 ,108(4-5).