Infraestructura portuaria y crecimiento económico regional en la Costa Oeste del Pacífico Sur: Un análisis de causalidad de Granger

The objective of this article is to determine the causal relationship between investment in port infrastructure and regional economic growth and measure their impact for 10 macro-regions of Peru and Chile during the period 2004-2016. To do that, a cointegration analysis in a panel data framework, as well as a vector error correction model and a Granger Non Causality test are used. The empirical evidence shows that there exists bidirectional causality in the short-term between the investment in port infrastructure and the economic growth, also an unidirectional relationship in the long-term from investment in port infrastructure towards economic growth. With respect to impact, an increase of USD 1 million of investment in port infrastructure, would lead increase of the regional GDP per capita in USD 56.11. On the other hand, it was found that there are asymmetric effects in the short-term between the investment in port infrastructure and the economic growth. In this way, a lesser effect is evidenced in the macro-regions of Peru from investment in port infrastructure towards economic growth.