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- On the effects of highway investment on the regional concentration of economic activity in the USAPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThe empirical results in this note are based on state-level VAR estimates using private output, employment, and investment, as well as different measures of highway investment to capture, for each state, both the direct effects of highway investment in the state itself and spillover effects of highway investment in other states. Empirical results suggest that the largest states tend to also be the biggest beneficiaries of highway investments which means that highway investment has not only contributed to regional concentration of economic activity but has done so in many of the largest states thereby contributing to regional asymmetries in the country
- Análise custo-benefício ex-post dos investimentos em scuts: o caso da scut do interior nortePublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Pereira, Rui; Andraz, Jorge MiguelA análise custo-benefício ex-post do projecto de investimento na SCUT Interior Norte aponta no sentido de este projecto demonstrar um valor financeiro e microeconómico muito positivo. Partindo da comparação de resultados entre cenários com e sem a existência da SCUT mostra-se que a existência desta SCUT permite ganhos consideráveis em termos de redução dos tempos de viagem, de sinistralidade, e de impactes ambientais.
- Análise custo-benefício ex-post dos investimentos em scuts: o caso da scut da Beira InteriorPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Pereira, Rui; Andraz, Jorge MiguelA análise custo-benefício ex-post do projecto de investimento na SCUT da Beira Interior aponta no sentido de este projecto demonstrar um valor financeiro e microeconómico muito positivo. Partindo da comparação de resultados entre cenários com e sem a existência da SCUT mostra-se que a existência desta SCUT permite ganhos consideráveis em termos de redução dos tempos de viagem, de sinistralidade, e de impactes ambientais.
- On the economic effects of public infrastructe investment: a survey of the international evidencePublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThis paper provides a survey of the significant literature on the effects of public infrastructure investment on economic performance and therefore constitutes a comprehensive reference for academic researchers and policy makers alike. It presents a comprehensive discussion of the empirical research regarding the impact of public infrastructure investment on economic performance in terms of both the methodological approaches followed and respective conclusions. It includes an integrated discussion of the methodological developments that successively have led to the estimation of production functions, cost and profit functions and, more recently, vector autoregressive models. Finally, it identifies some important areas for future research and highlights the natural convergence of this literature with the macroeconomic literature on the effects of fiscal policies.
- Social security and economic performance in Portugal: after all that has been said and done how much has actually changed?Publication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThis paper provides an empirical estimate of the macroeconomic effects of the Portuguese pay-as-you-go social security system based on data for the period 1970–2007 and on VAR estimates using GDP, the unit cost of labor, the unemployment rate, the savings rate and social security spending. The major findings are twofold. First, growing social security spending has had detrimental effects on all of the private sector variables under consideration suggesting the existence of sizable inefficiencies. Second, these inefficiencies persist despite the successive reforms that took place over the last two decades. These results highlight the need for structural reforms of the pay-as-you-go system thereby addressing the sources of these inefficiencies, regardless of whether or not the system is financially sustainable. Furthermore, any reforms designed to address sustainability concerns cannot ignore these inefficiencies or risk making them even worse and thereby hindering the quest for sustainability itself.
- On the regional incidence of public investment in highways in the USAPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThe objective of this paper is to investigate the regional incidence of the aggregate effects of public investment in highways in the US taking into consideration the possible existence of regional spillovers. The empirical results are based on VAR estimates at both the aggregate and state levels using private output, employment, and investment, as well as different measures of public investment. Empirical results allow us to establish several stylized facts. First, public investment in highways affects private sector variables positively at the aggregate level as well as in most states. Second, overall, the spillover effects of public investment in highways are at least 80% of the total effects for all private sector variables. Third, the spillovers have a clear geographical pattern in that they tend to be more important in western states and the corridor between the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast. Fourth, we find that relative to their share of the US private sector variables, the biggest beneficiaries of public investment in highways tend to be the largest states in the country. This suggests that public investment in highways has contributed to concentration of private sector activity in the largest states.
- On the economic and budgetary effects of investments in SCUTS: the Portuguese toll-free highwaysPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThis paper provides empirical evidence on the economic and budgetary effects of the recent investments in toll-free highways in Portugal, the so-called SCUTS, in an effort to bring some clarity to the current policy debate on these highways. This debate is centered on the issue of the financial sustainability of these highways for the public sector and is derived from the fact that their financing through public–private partnerships and shadow tolls involves regular payments from the public budget to the private firms operating them. In this context, the introduction of tolls has been suggested as a mechanism to alleviate possible budgetary pressures. Our first main conclusion is that investments in SCUTS have positive economic effects in all regions of the country. Furthermore, we find that regional spillovers account for about three-quarters of the total effects of these investments. A paradigmatic case is Lisbon, a region that captures the greatest share of these effects without any investments having actually occurred in the region itself. Our second main conclusion is that investments in SCUTS do not seem to generate problems of financial sustainability for the public budget. We estimate that for all SCUTS, the equilibrium tax rate, i.e., the rate that would balance the tax revenues induced by these highways and the shadow tolls the government has to pay, is lower than the effective tax rate for the economy. As a corollary and from a policy standpoint, our results suggest that the introduction of tolls is questionable from a conceptual perspective due to the magnitude of spillovers and seems to be unnecessary from a financial perspective.
- On the economic and fiscal effects of investment in road infrastructure in PortugalPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThe objective of this paper is to investigate the economic and fiscal impact of road infrastructure investment in Portugal, focusing on the effects for each administrative region of both local investments and investments in other regions. We estimate VAR models for the national economy as well as for each of the five regions, and using the associated impulse-response functions we find that investment in road infrastructures has been a powerful instrument to increase private investment, to create new permanent jobs and to promote long-term growth in all regions. More importantly, investment in road infrastructure, both at the aggregate level and for each one of the five regions, generates fiscal effects that largely exceed the initial investment itself. Accordingly, there is no trade-off in the long-term between the potentially positive economic effects and the potentially negative budgetary effects of such investments, i.e., both economic and budgetary effects are positive. As a corollary, policies that would reduce current road investment as a response to the current budgetary concerns will result in lower long-term growth as well as worse budgetary conditions in the future.
- Análise custo-benefício ex-post dos Investimentos em Scuts: o caso da Scut das Beiras Litoral e AltaPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Pereira, Rui; Andraz, Jorge MiguelA análise custo-benefício ex-post do projecto de investimento na SCUT das Beiras Litoral e Alta aponta no sentido de este projecto demonstrar um valor financeiro e microeconómico muito positivo. Partindo da comparação de resultados entre cenários com e sem a existência da SCUT mostra-se que a existência desta SCUT permite ganhos consideráveis em termos de redução dos tempos de viagem, de sinistralidade, e de impactes ambientais. De acordo com a informação desponível calculamos que a taxa de rentabilidade interna financeira da SCUT para o concessionário é de 10,4%, correspondendo a um valor actual líquido de 447.460 mil euros (a preços de 1998), enquanto a taxa interna de rentabilidade microeconómica é de 10,7%, correspondendo a um valor actual líquido de 746.125 mil euros (a preços de 1998). Relativamente aos resultados obtidos com a análise ex-ante, observa-se uma descida de 10,0% no valor actualizado líquido financeiro e uma descida de 1,57 pontos percentuais na correspondente taxa interna de rentabilidade. Ao nível económico, a variação é muito marginal. O valor actualizado líquido apresenta uma redução de 17,8%, a taxa interna de rentabilidade apresenta uma melhoria de 0,62 pontos percentuais e não se regista alteração do rácio benefício-custo.
- Análise custo-benefício ex-post dos investimentos em scuts: o caso da scut do grande PortoPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Pereira, Rui; Andraz, Jorge MiguelA análise custo-benefício ex-post do projecto de investimento na SCUT do Grande Porto aponta no sentido de este projecto demonstrar um valor financeiro e microeconómico muito positivo. Partindo da comparação de resultados entre cenários com e sem a existência da SCUT mostra-se que a existência desta SCUT permite ganhos consideráveis em termos de redução dos tempos de viagem, de sinistralidade, e de impactes ambientais.