Investment and Growth: The Impact of Britain's Post‐War Trunk Roads Programme |
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| Authors: | David Starkie |
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| Affiliation: | Case Associates London and University of Applied Sciences BremenThe author wishes to thank Doug Andrew, John Dodgson, David Gillen, and David Thompson, who have been of considerable help during the preparation of this paper. He would also like to thank two referees and the editor for useful additional suggestions. None of the foregoing bears any responsibility for the paper's failings. |
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| Abstract: | In Great Britain, a basic inter‐urban network of motorways was completed in a very short period between the end of 1959 and 1972. We calculate that this substantial investment had the potential to reduce most inter‐urban journey times by about one third. In spite of this, a recent OECD study suggested that the investment had no discernible positive impact on the trend rate of economic growth. We attribute this outcome to a serious misalignment of the early investments with the then predominant flows of industrial and commercial traffics and a significant, and probably endogenous, increase in real wages in a road transport industry in which labour productivity was slow to improve. We conclude with a number of policy recommendations. |
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| Keywords: | H54 L91 L92 N74 R41 R42 economic growth investment projects motorways road transport |
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