Search Results
Journal Article
Is public capital productive? A review of the evidence
An examination of the empirical evidence regarding the productive effects of public capital on the U.S. economy, concluding that although boosting infrastructure investment might have a positive impact on private output, the magnitude of the effect is unclear.
Journal Article
Should government spending on capital goods be raised?
Journal Article
Is there a shortfall in public capital investment? An overview
This article summarizes the Banks economic conference held in June 1990. The conference aimed to determine the extent to which the United States may be underinvesting in public infrastructure, explain the potential economic consequences, and suggest mechanisms to help alleviate any adverse trends. It focused on public investment in physical capital only to make the topic manageable, and should not be interpreted to mean that investment in human capital is in any way less important. ; Two quite different perspectives on the need for more infrastructure investment emerge from the discussion. On ...
Working Paper
Fiscal policy and productivity growth in the OECD
We use a simple endogenous growth model with productive public capital to investigate the degree to which observed fiscal policies in eight OECD countries can account for slowdowns in the growth rates of aggregate labor productivity since 1970. In model simulations, we find that none of the observed public capital policies can generate slowdowns of sufficient magnitude to match those in the data. For most countries in our sample, a simulation that combines the observed public capital policy with the observed tax policy does a better job of accounting for the slowdown than either policy in ...
Journal Article
Noteworthy: transportation: Texas highway investment falls short
Journal Article
Highway grants: roads to prosperity?
Federal highway grants to states appear to boost economic activity in the short and medium term. The short-term effects appear to be due largely to increases in aggregate demand. Medium-term effects apparently reflect the increased productive capacity brought by improved roads. Overall, each dollar of federal highway grants received by a state raises that state?s annual economic output by at least two dollars, a relatively large multiplier.
Conference Paper
How should public infrastructure be financed?
Working Paper
Economic estimates of urban infrastructure needs
This paper, critical of commonly employed measures of capital spending needs, offers an alternative method for constructing needs estimates and tests the model using highway spending data for 10 midwestern urban counties.
Working Paper
The impact of capital grants on maintenance in the public sector
A study of how state and federal grants affect the maintenance policies of local mass-transit providers, showing that private owners of transit capital devote significantly greater resources to maintenance than do public owners of similar capital.