Research

Publications

"A Pseudo-Panel Approach to Estimating Dynamic Effects of Road Infrastructure Provision on Firm Performance in a Developing Country Context" (2018)

(as part of the PhD under the supervision of Daniel J. Graham and Sabine D'Costa;

Regional Science and Urban Economics 70, pp. 20 - 34.)

To overcome the absence of true firm-level data, we provide evidence that the use of pseudo-panels based on aggregated data can correctly identify production function parameters. We construct a pseudo-panel of Colombian manufacturing firms for the years of 2000–2009 to study the effects of transportation infrastructure on firm performance in a developing country and find elasticities of output with respect to road infrastructure ranging from 0.13 to 0.15 per cent. This confirms that roads are important for private output growth and, as our results are larger than those reported in the literature for developed countries, that transportation infrastructure is relatively more important for the economy of developing countries. We also identify a one-year time lag with which firms' outputs react to road stock changes. This could be indicative of firms requiring time to adjust their production to road changes. We furthermore identify that the effect of road infrastructure is particularly large for heavy manufacturing industries. Moreover, we investigate the regional heterogeneity of the role of transportation infrastructure for firms' output growth. Our results are robust to different econometric concerns. We additionally provide Monte Carlo simulations to support the validity of pseudo-panels in the context of firm-level data.

Working Paper Version 2017

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Working Papers

"The Geographical Effects of Transportation Infrastructure on Firms' Output and Productivity Patterns across East and West Germany"

Improvements and increases in the transport network directly reduce input costs for firms, resulting in increases of total factor productivity (TFP). Furthermore, transport infrastructure expansions reduce firms' production and subsequent distribution costs hence resulting in increased competition which in turn leads to an increases in the general level of TFP. We investigate the relationship and disparities of the effects of transportation on firm level TFP to analyse the role of transportation networks for the spatial distribution of economic activity.

We focus on the unique case of the disparities between the German former West and East regions to highlight the interaction of the effects of transportation investments with other economic factors observed in regions. The particular historical case of Germany is unique and hence of interest for research as there remain economic differences across East and West German regions. We investigate if transportation investments can be a factor in raising TFP through increasing the market access of East German regions.

We contribute to the literature on the effect of transportation infrastructure on firms, by investigating the role of regional transportation infrastructure and market access in East and West Germany. We investigate whether transportation infrastructure and market access have influenced the divergence between the economic performance of the former East and West German states. Further attention is given to researching a possible underinvestment in infrastructure in the East German states and its effects of the economy.

Work in Progress / Derzeit in Arbeit

"Transport Infrastructure and Trade. A Meta-Analysis of the Existing Literature"

Conference Presentations / Konferenzpräsentationen :

ITEA - Conference of the International Transportation Economics Association, Paris/France (2019)

Workshop on "Geodata in Economics" under the Project on Shining (New) Light on Regional Inequality, Convergence and Development by the German Research Foundation (DFG), Hamburg/Germany (2019)

NARSC - 65th Annual North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association International NARSC, San Antonio/TX/USA (2018)

European Week of Regions and Cities, European Commission, Brussels/Belgium (2018)

UEA - 8th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association, Düsseldorf/Germany (2018)

NARSC/UEA - 11th Meeting of the Urban Economics Association at the 63rd Annual North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association International, Minneapolis/MN/USA (2016)

ERSA/UEA - 6th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association at the 56th European Regional Science Association Congress, Vienna/Austria (2016)

TRB - 95th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington D.C./USA (2016)

NARSC - 62nd Annual North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association International, Portland/OR/USA (2015)

Workshop on "Infrastructure and the Spatial Organization of Economic Activity" CSIC/Spanish National Research Council, Madrid/ES (2015)

hEART - 2nd Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation, KTH Stockholm/SE (2013)