{"title":"Highway Capital Expenditures and Induced Vehicle Travel","authors":"Sisinnio Concas","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2062599","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The authors investigate the effects of public capital investment on the demand for travel. They define capital stock as a productive flow that accounts for the physical deterioration of infrastructure over time. They present a framework where additions to capital stock only cover a portion of the long-run equilibrium level, and where policy decisions are dictated by expectations of economic and travel growth. To the extent that these investments increase productivity, they generate induced travel. Using a panel dataset at the state level for the period 1982-2005, the authors find that the elasticity of travel demand with respect to changes in state highway capital stock is equal to 0.041in the short run, while the long-run is 0.237. The results show that changes in capital expenditures in response to past levels of traffic are characterized by a three-year lag, suggesting that the investment response to changes in travel is slow to converge to the desired long-run levels.","PeriodicalId":163321,"journal":{"name":"TransportRN: Financing of Transportation (Topic)","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2012-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"TransportRN: Financing of Transportation (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2062599","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The authors investigate the effects of public capital investment on the demand for travel. They define capital stock as a productive flow that accounts for the physical deterioration of infrastructure over time. They present a framework where additions to capital stock only cover a portion of the long-run equilibrium level, and where policy decisions are dictated by expectations of economic and travel growth. To the extent that these investments increase productivity, they generate induced travel. Using a panel dataset at the state level for the period 1982-2005, the authors find that the elasticity of travel demand with respect to changes in state highway capital stock is equal to 0.041in the short run, while the long-run is 0.237. The results show that changes in capital expenditures in response to past levels of traffic are characterized by a three-year lag, suggesting that the investment response to changes in travel is slow to converge to the desired long-run levels.