Regional Analysis of Domestic Integration in Egypt

2015

Egypt has proposed a new development corridor. A main component is a desertbased expansion of the current highway network. This network is founded on a 1200-kilometer north-south route that starts at a proposed new port near ElAlemein and runs parallel to the Nile Valley to the border of Sudan. It also includes 21 east-west branches that connect the main axis to densely populated cities on the Nile. The paper is a first attempt at an economic assessment of the impact of this proposed corridor. It uses an interregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model developed and reported in a prior paper. Here, that model is integrated for the first time with a stylized geo-coded transportation network model to help quantify the spatial effects of transportation cost change due specifically to the efficiencies induced by the corridor. The paper focuses on the likely structural economic impacts that such a large investment in transportation could enable through a series of simulations, in...

DESCRIPTION Egypt has proposed a new development corridor. A main component is a desert-based expansion of the current highway network. This network is founded on a 1200-kilometer north-south route that starts at a proposed new port near El-Alemein and runs parallel to the Nile Valley to the border of Sudan. It also includes 21 east-west branches that connect the main axis to densely populated cities on the Nile. The paper is a first attempt at an economic assessment of the impact of this proposed corridor. It uses an interregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model developed and reported in a prior paper. Here, that model is integrated with a more detailed geo-coded transportation network model to help quantify the spatial effects of transportation cost change due specifically to changes in accessibility induced by the corridor. The paper focuses on the likely structural economic impacts that such a large investment in transportation could enable through a series of simulat...

Transport Policy, 2020

We develop a Multi-Regional Spatial Computable General Equilibrium (TurkSCGE) model for economic analysis of highway projects, estimating their impacts on regional welfare and economic outcomes in Turkey. The framework integrates a transport sub-model that estimates minimum distances with a multiregional Computable General Equilibrium model that estimates economic aggregates. TurkSCGE identifies eight sectors in each of 11 regions. Three experiments explore the impacts of decreases in transportation margins from 'distance shortening'. The three highway projects involved are estimated to yield a combined increase in GDP of 1.6%. However, the new highways in eastern Turkey, connecting eastern regions to each other and the west are shown to be best options for improving welfare in poorer regions.

Middle East Development Journal, 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Forum, members of its Board of Trustees, or its donors.

Social Science Research Network, 2013

Transportation infrastructure plays an important role in regional economic development both in the stimulation of growth and as a response to output expansion. However, measuring these effects quantitatively has been a challenge due to the complicated impact mechanisms of transportation infrastructure. This complication is due to two reasons: first, regional impacts of transportation infrastructure are achieved through a mechanism that involves both a demand influence through the variation of transportation price and a supply influence implemented through the variation of transportation cost; second, impacts of transportation are usually evaluated in a regional context where the presence of unobserved local or regional variables may give rise to spatial autocorrelation. As a result, impact analysis may become biased and spurious. This study develops a new method called Spatial Econometric Computable General Equilibrium (SECGE) model, which integrates both spatial econometrics with equilibrium modeling techniques to improve the effectiveness of impact analysis on transportation infrastructure. This study differs from previous studies in the following three aspects: First, through a spatial autocorrelation test, the presence of spatial dependence is observed and confirmed among the elasticities of factor substitution in the US. To deal with spatial dependence, spatial panel econometric techniques are introduced to estimate the elasticity of factor substitution of different sectors for the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function with consideration of spatial direct and indirect effects. and traditional OLS estimates. Although the differences are relatively small in this aggregate case study, implications for more sensitive disaggregated regional models are clear.

Economic Systems Research, 2009

A This paper develops a framework for the economic analysis of highway projects that is then used to estimate the dynamic economic effects of a highway project on the economic growth and the regional disparity in Korea. The framework is composed of a transport model and a multiregional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. The transport model measures a change in interregional shortest distances and the accessibility due to the highway project. The CGE model estimates the spatial economic effects of the project on GDP, the price, exports, and the regional distribution of wages and population. The simulation allows policy makers to determine which highway development deserves the priority for investment, based on consideration of economic growth and regional economic equity in the long run. The simulation found that all the highway projects have positive effects on GDP and export growth as well as regional equity in terms of wage and population.

Sustainability

The correlations between investments in transport infrastructure and territorial development continue to concern public authorities. They are responsible for optimising the allocation of financial resources, and they are interested in the correct short- and long-term estimations of investments in transport infrastructure’s consequences for development. The direct and indirect effects of transport infrastructure are present in the socio-economic assessment methodologies of projects. Despite the recorded progress, uncertainties remain in technical assessments, especially socio-economic ones, and they do not remove decision-makers’ concerns regarding the necessity and appropriateness of investments. Based on these aspects, this paper aimed to clarify the effects of new infrastructure on socio-economic development.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Impact assessment of transportation investment policy is a challenging task as assessment outcome is sensitive to various attributes such as methodology, time period, scale and location of analysis. This study is conducted to evaluate regional impact of public transportation infrastructure in the USA at multilevel geographic scales. The assessment is implemented using a spatial econometric computable general equilibrium approach which integrates spatial econometric techniques with computable general equilibrium models to control for spatial spillover effects. The results found that regional economic impacts of public transportation infrastructure vary substantially by mode and geographic scale. The US highway infrastructure tends to have consistent and dominant impacts on both the US national and regional economy across different geographic scales. The impact of public airport infrastructure tends to be much larger at the national level than state and metropolitan level, whereas the economic contribution of public transit including passenger rail infrastructure tends to be much stronger at the US northeast metro level than the national level of analysis.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper studies regional impact of three mature public surface transportation infrastructures in the Northeast corridor of the US: highway, public railway and public transit. Infrastructure stock is valued in real terms from 1991 to 2009. A spatial panel approach with fixed effects is adopted to test the hypothesis of spillovers by allowing for spatial dependence. The result shows that public surface transportation infrastructure in general does have a significant impact on regional output, most of which is from spillover effect; highways have an overwhelming influence through both local effects and spillover effects. The impacts from public railway and public transit are not significant, but transit does show a positive though small spillover effect.

Economic Systems Research, 2004

A transportation network-multiregional CGE model is applied to estimate the network effects of a set of highway projects on the value-added by region and industrial sector for the construction and operation periods. Among nine highways in an east-west direction in Korea, the East-West 9 highway increases the GDP by 0.300% over the 30-period time horizon with 0.016% of the GDP as the network effect. This network effect is defined as a difference between summation of the net increase in the GDP from the development of each sub-link of the highway without the spatial linkage and the change in the GDP resulting from the concurrent development of the whole links with spatial linkages. Also, the highway has the largest network effect on the manufacturing sector of Kwangju Metropolitan Area by 0.164 billion US$ per year, resulting in a gain in the regional GRP per capita by 15.88 US$ per year. Since more network effects are generated in the less-development regions such as Kwangju rather than the developed regions, highway development can contribute to the reduction in regional disparities.