Roads to Prosperity or Bridges to Nowhere? Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Public Infrastructure Investment

Sylvain Leduc, Daniel Wilson

NBER Working Paper No. 18042
Issued in May 2012

---- Acknowledgments ----

We thank Brian Lucking and Elliott Marks for superb and tireless research assistance. We are grateful to John Fernald, Bart Hobijn, Òscar Jordà, John Williams and seminar attendees at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the University of Nevada, and the SEEK/CEPR Workshop on "News, Sentiment, and Confidence in Fluctuations," for helpful comments. We thank the many transportation officials who improved our understanding of the institutional complexities of highway financing and spending, especially Ken Simonson (Associated General Contractors of America), Nancy Richardson (formerly of Iowa DOT), Jack Wells (U.S. DOT), and Alison Black and William Buechner (both of American Road and Transportation Builders Assn.) Finally, we are grateful to the editors of the 2012 NBER Macroeconomic Annual for excellent guidance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, or the Federal Reserve System.

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