Hannah Schürenberg-Frosch

Improving Africa's Roads: Modelling Infrastructure Investment and its Effect on Sectoral Production Behaviour

Given the scarce resources for public investment in developing countries, policy analysis should include a detailed perspective on the effects of infrastructure. This article develops a modelling framework for analysing the effects of improved road infrastructure on the economy of African countries. The theoretical framework is tested empirically and used for simulations in a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, and the effects on production and welfare are analysed. The model also serves to investigate the effect of roads on the economic participation of rural households.

One Model fits all? Determinants of Transport Costs across Sectors and Country Groups

We show with the aid of pooled OLS estimations that investments in improved road infrastructure have the potential to signi cantly reduce transport costs. However, this result can only be clearly con rmed for industrial countries and is of primary importance for production and transportation of agricultural goods. For developing and transition countries we fi nd other determinants such as weather conditions to be more important in determining transport costs. A key variable, especially in these countries, is corruption. At very high levels corruption has the potential to prevent positive effects from roads on transport costs or to even reverse them. This paper contributes to the literature on infrastructure investment by introducing and applying an internationally comparable measure of transport costs which can be calculated for a large and growing number of countries. We isolate important determinants of transport costs and provide insights into international and sectoral differences concerning the impact of roads on transport costs. We conclude that investment in transport infrastructure can have substantial positive effects especially on agricultural production and the efficient marketing of agricultural products but only if speci c conditions are in place.

We Could Not Care Less About Armington Elasticities – But Should We? A Meta-Sensitivity Analysis of the Influence of Armington Elasticity Misspecification on Simulation Results

This paper investigates the robustness of CGE models with respect to the elasticities of substitution in demand between domestically produced goods and foreign goods - the so-called Armington elasticities. The Armington-type modeling of trade is still one of the most extensively used specifications in CGE modeling. For a long time the choice of the respective elasticities of substitution has not been given much attention. We resimulate 50 published CGE policy simulations each a 1000 times and randomize the elasticities. The results of this experiment clearly indicate that a change in the elasticities has noteworthy quantitative and qualitative effects on the results in more than half of the models. We thus conclude that the choice of the elasticities should get more attention and robustness of models with respect to elasticities should be tested by modellers.

Unterschiedliche nationale Konsumfunktionen als Quelle konjunktureller Asymmetrien in Europa

In allen Landern der Eurozone stellt der private Verbrauch die bei weitem wichtigste Komponente der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Nachfrage dar. Dem privaten Konsumverhalten kommt deshalb bei der Analyse und Prognose der konjunkturellen Entwicklung eine be sondere Bedeutung zu.