Highway Conditions and Insufficient Maintenance in Germany: A Threat for Economic Growth?. (1st October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gaus, Dennis; Link, Heike
• Is Part Of: Journal of transport economics and policy. Volume 55:Number 4(2021:Oct.)
• Page Start: 308
• Page End: 333
• Publication Date: 2021-10-01
• Subjects: Transportation -- Periodicals; 388.05
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-5951

Abstract

We analyse the impact of transportation infrastructure capital and its maintenance status on regional economic production, exploiting panel data on the German county level (N = 401) between 2007 and 2016 in a spatial translog production function. Various SLX and SDEM models are estimated using FGLS and GMM estimators accounting for endogeneity. We find a positive impact of the transport infrastructure capital locally and supra-regionally, and provide evidence that insufficient maintenance and low infrastructure conditions significantly slow economic growth. The analysis shows that this effect is mainly driven by the Bundesstraßen network as the backbone of the regional German road system.