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Despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries, little is known about their benefits. This paper derives an expression for the willingness-to-pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a hypothetical road project. Estimation is based on novel cross-sectional data collected in a small region of Madagascar with enormous, yet plausibly exogenous, variation in transport cost. A road that essentially eliminated transport costs in the study area would boost the incomes of the remotest households-those facing transport costs of about USD 75/ton-by nearly half, mostly by raising non-farm earnings. This benefit estimate is contrasted to one based on a hedonic approach.

High transport --- Infrastructure investment --- Road --- Road improvement --- Road projects --- Rural infrastructure --- Rural roads --- Transport --- Transport Costs --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Transport infrastructure

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The authors present a new database of minimum distance road routes connecting 138 cities in 27 countries across Europe and Central Asia. They use it to show that improved road network quality is robustly associated with higher intraregional trade flows. Gravity model simulations suggest that an ambitious but feasible road upgrade could increase trade by 50 percent over baseline, exceeding the expected gains from tariff reductions or trade facilitation programs of comparable scope. Cross-country spillovers due to overland transit are important: total intraregional trade could be increased by 30 percent by upgrading roads in just three countries-Albania, Hungary, and Romania.

Bottlenecks --- Costs --- High Transport --- Initiatives --- Investments --- Road --- Road Improvement --- Road Infrastructure --- Road Network --- Road Quality --- Road Transport --- Roads --- Route --- Routes --- Trans Transit Routes --- Transport --- Transport Costs --- Transport Data --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Travel --- True

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Based on extensive data collection in Uganda, this paper demonstrates that the rural access index, as defined today, should not be a government objective because the benefit of such investment is minimal, whereas achieving rural accessibility at less than 2 kilometers would require massive investments that are not sustainable. Taking into account the fact that plot size is limited on average to less than 1 hectare, a farmer's transport requirement is usually minimal and does not necessarily involve massive investments in infrastructure. This is because most farmers cannot fully load a truck or pay for this service and, even if productivity were to increase significantly, the production threshold would not be reached by most individual farmers. Therefore, in terms of public policy, maintenance of the existing rural roads rather than opening new roads should be given priority; the district feeder road allocation maintenance formula should be revised to take into account economic potential and, finally, policy makers should devote their attention to innovative marketing models from other countries where smallholder loads are consolidated through private-based consolidators.

Access roads --- Accessibility --- Affordable transport --- Means of transport --- Mode of transport --- Modes of transport --- Population density --- Road --- Road building --- Road conditions --- Road improvement --- Road network --- Road quality --- Roads --- Rural infrastructure --- Rural roads --- Transport --- Transport Economics, Policy and Planning --- Transportation --- Transportation costs --- Travel time