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This paper describes a parsimonious approach to the economic analysis of transportation investments. In a gravity model of trade, project benefits may be summarized by a money metric for the change in market access experienced by all cities due to the investment. This metric is equivalent to the change in the value of all payments to urban land-the fixed factor of production. Using this model and an original geographic information system data set of Belt and Road Initiative projects in Eurasia, the paper predicts additional income paid to owners of urban land, for each project and city. Individually, nearly half of the proposed infrastructure is estimated to provide significant gains; however, the rest is estimated to be of little value because it fails to create new least-cost paths between large populations centers. Considering the proposed new transport infrastructure as a system, the share of projects that provide gains increases to almost two-thirds. While gains in market access accrue primarily to low-income countries, gains from many projects accrue outside the project country, and in dollar terms more so to richer countries. This finding is consistent with the idea that infrastructure investment along international trade corridors can be a public good. These estimates should be taken as lower bounds, because they do not include direct benefits to users, for instance, time savings. Even so, they offer a useful way for governments to estimate the short-run gains from infrastructure and prioritize infrastructure spending.

Belt And Road --- Cost Benefit Analysis --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Market Access --- Ports and Waterways --- Trade and Services --- Transport --- Transport Corridors --- Transportation Infrastructure

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Simple linear distances between origin and destination poorly describe travel in Nepal, where rugged terrain, underdeveloped transportation infrastructure, and diverse vegetation heavily influence favorable travel routes. In this context, expected travel times explain more about the remoteness of starting locations than geographic distance. Applied to service facilities, these time-based measures of remoteness amount to measures of physical accessibility to services. However, traditional survey-based measures of time suffer from problems of inaccurate reporting and standard survey error. Instead, this study built a geographic information system-based cost time model of travel that enables more accurate and generalizable assessment of accessibility. Having validated the generic model and compared it with other popular metrics, the study demonstrates its value by inputting a variety of services into it. This paper provides descriptive analyses of accessibility trends to these services at national, provincial, municipal, and geographic scales and suggests research possibilities unlocked by such a general purpose model. The paper concludes with thoughts for how the data and analysis, both freely available public goods, can enable additional research and better policy making.

Access of Poor to Social Services --- Access to Services --- Accessibility --- Connectivity --- Geographic Information System --- GIS --- Inequality --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Policy --- Remoteness --- Roads and Highways --- Social Protections and Assistance --- Social Protections and Labor --- Spatial Disparity --- Transport --- Transportation Infrastructure

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This study constructs a microdata set of about 143,000 firms to estimate the monetary costs of infrastructure disruptions in 137 low- and middle-income countries, representing 78 percent of the world population and 80 percent of the GDP of low- and -middle-income countries. Specifically, this study assesses the impact of transport, electricity, and water disruptions on the capacity utilization rates of firms. The estimates suggest that utilization losses amount to 151 billion dollar a year-of which 107 billion dollar are due to transport disruptions, 38 billion dollar due to blackouts, and 6 billion dollar due to dryouts. Moreover, this study shows that electricity outages are causing sales losses equivalent to 82 billion dollar a year. Firms are also incurring the costs of self-generated electricity, estimated to amount to 64 billion dollar a year (including annualized capital expenditure). At almost 300 billion dollar a year, these figures highlight the substantial drag that unreliable infrastructure imposes on firms in developing countries. Yet, these figures are likely to be under-estimates as neither all countries nor all types of impacts are covered.

Business Environment --- Capacity Utilization --- Climate Change Impacts --- Electric Power --- Electricity --- Energy --- Environment --- Firm Productivity --- Infrastructure Economics --- Infrastructure Investment --- Natural Disaster --- Natural Disasters --- Power Outage --- Private Sector Economics --- Resilient Infrastructure --- Transport --- Transportation Infrastructure --- Water Supply --- Water Supply and Sanitation Economics