The role of infrastructure as a factor of growth and development of countries and regions is often considered to be crucial. Among the various types of transport infrastructure, airports are considered as particularly strategic because of the increasing importance of air transport in connecting territories. This paper studies the impact of airports on Italian provinces. To this end, it builds on the framework proposed by Brueckner, where sectoral employment is regressed on a series of controls and on airline traffic. That framework is extended to take account of selection bias due to the location choices of airports and spatial spillover effects. It is found that the elasticity of service-sector employment to airport passengers is 0.045 and that of spillover effects due to neighbouring airports is almost 0.017.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ACI (2004) The social and economic impact of airports in Europe. ACI-Europe and York Aviation .
Aschauer, D.A. ( 1989) Is public expenditure productive?, Journal of Monetary Economics, 23(1), pp. 177-200.
4.
Barro, R. ( 1991) Government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth , Journal of Political Economy, 98(5), pp. 103-125.
5.
Bertola, G. ( 1998) Irreversible investment, Research in Economics , 52(1), pp. 3-37.
6.
Boarnet, M. ( 1998) Spillovers and the locational effects of public infrastructure , Journal of Regional Science, 38(3), pp. 381-400.
7.
Brueckner, J. ( 1982) Metropolitan airline traffic: determinants and effects on local employment growth. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (mimeograph).
8.
Brueckner, J. ( 2003) Airline traffic and economic development, Urban Studies, 40(8), pp. 1455- 1469.
9.
Button, K., Lall, S., Stough, R. and Trice, M. ( 1999) High-technology employment and hub airports, Journal of Air Transport Management, 5, pp. 53-59.
10.
Calderon, C. and Servén, L. ( 2003) The output cost of Latin America’s infrastructure gap, in: W. Easterly and L. Servén (Eds) The Limits of Stabilization: Infrastructure, Public Deficits, and Growth in Latin America, pp. 95-118. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
11.
Cameron, A.C. and Trivedi, P. ( 2005) Micro-econometrics: Methods and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Canning, D. and Bennathan, E. ( 2000) The social rate of return on infrastructure investments. Policy Research Paper No. 2390, World Bank, Washington, DC.
13.
CERTeT (2003) Analisi del mercato aereo in Italia: un quadro sistematico e aggiornato. Assaereo (National Association of Air Operators and Air Transport).
14.
Cohen, J.P. and Morrison, C.J. ( 2003) Airport infrastructure spillovers in a network system , Journal of Urban Economics, 54, pp. 459-473.
15.
Cohen, J.P. and Morrison, C.J. ( 2004) Public infrastructure investment, interstate spatial spillovers, and manufacturing costs, Review of Economics and Statistics , 86(2), pp. 551-560.
16.
Coppola, F.S., Panaro, A. and Carreras, C. ( 2007) Trasporti, logistica e sviluppo region-ale: risultati di un’indagine territoriale in un confronto nord-sud, Rivista Economica del Mezzogiorno, 21(3/4), pp. 925-961.
17.
Devarajan, V.S. and Zou, H. ( 1996) The composition of public spending and economic growth , Journal of Monetary Economics, 37, pp. 313-344.
18.
Estache, A. ( 2004) Infrastructure: a survey of recent and upcoming issues . World Bank, Washington, DC (mimeograph).
19.
Garcia-Milà, T., McGuire, T.J. and Porter, R.H. ( 1996) The effect of public capital in state-level production functions reconsidered, The Review of Economics and Statistics , 78, pp. 177-180.
20.
Gervasoni, A., Del Giudice, R. and Sartori, M. (Eds) ( 2006) Infrastrutture e Competitività. Milan: EGEA.
21.
Graham, A. ( 2003) Managing Airports: An International Perspective . Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
22.
Green, R.K. ( 2006) Airports and economic development. Department of Finance, School of Business, The George Washington University (mimeograph).
23.
Gruppo Clas ( 2005) Gli effetti economici dello sviluppo dell’aeroporto di Milano-Orio al Serio. SACBO.
24.
Hart, D.A. and McCann, P. ( 2000) The continuing growth of London Stansted airport: regional economic impacts and potential, Regional Studies , 34(9), pp. 875-893.
25.
Hirano, K. and Imbens, G.W. ( 2004) The propensity score with continuous treatments. University of Miami and University of California at Berkeley (mimeograph).
26.
Holtz-Eakin, D. ( 1994) Public-sector capital and the productivity puzzle , The Review of Economics and Statistics, 76(1), pp. 12-21.
27.
Holtz-Eakin, D. and Schwartz, A.E. ( 1995) Infrastructure in a structural model of economic growth , Regional Science and Urban Economics, 25, pp. 131-151.
28.
Imai, K. and Dyk, D. A. van ( 2004) Causal inference with general treatment regimes: generalizing the propensity score, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Theory and Methods, 99(467), pp. 854-866.
29.
Kamps, C. ( 2005) The dynamic effects of public capital: VAR evidence for 22 OECD countries, International Tax and Public Finance , 12(4), pp. 533-558.
30.
McCann, P. and Shefer, D. ( 2004) Location, agglomeration and infrastructure, Papers in Regional Science, 83, pp. 177-196.
31.
McMillen, D. ( 1995) Selection bias in spatial econometric models, Journal of Regional Science, 35, pp. 417-436.
32.
Morrison, C. and Schwartz, A. ( 1996) State infrastructure and productive performance , American Economic Review, 86(5), pp. 1095-1112.
33.
Otto, G.D. and Voss, G.M. ( 1996) Public capital and private production in Australia , Southern Economic Journal, 62(3), pp. 723-738.
34.
Pels, E., Njegovan, N. and Behrens, C. ( 2009) Low cost airlines and airport competition, Transportation Research E, 45, pp. 335-344.
35.
Percoco, M. ( 2004) Infrastructure and economic efficiency in Italian regions , Networks and Spatial Economics, 4(4), pp. 361-378.
36.
Perotti, R. ( 2004) Public investment: another (different) look. Università Bocconi (mimeograph).
37.
Redding, S.J., Sturm, D. and Wolf, N. ( 2007) History and industry location: evidence from German airports . Discussion Paper No. 6345, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC.
38.
Roman, C., Espino, R. and Martin, J.C. ( 2007) Competition of high speed train with air transport: the case of Madrid-Barcelona, Journal of Air Transport Management , 13, pp. 277-284.
39.
Rosenthal, S. and Strange, W.C. ( 2001) The determinants of agglomeration, Journal of Urban Economics, 50, pp. 191-229.
40.
Svimez (2008) Rapporto sull’economia del Mezzogiorno. Bologna: il Mulino .
41.
Zucchetti, R. ( 2001) Aeroporti di Roma: effetti economici, in: R. Zucchetti and O. Baccelli (Eds) Aeroporti e territorio: Conflitti e opportunità di sviluppo. Milan: Egea.
