Mobility and Congestion in Urban India

Akbar, Prottoy; Couture, Victor; Duranton, Gilles; Storeygard, Adam

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-8546

Cited by 25 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Poor countries cannot afford the ideal investments required to deal with the negative externalities of dense cities and are always playing a game of catch-up with rapid industrialization. Clustering of employment requires expensive transportation infrastructure to allow large numbers of workers to reach firms in city centers or peripheral industrial and commercial zones as well as to allow firms to get their goods to markets (Fujita and Ogawa 1982;Heblich, Redding, and Sturm 2018;Akbar et al 2018;Tsivanidis 2019). The sewer systems and safe water supplies required to improve health and reduce mortality from disease (Kappner 2019) at high population densities are also expensive.…”

Section: Some Distinctive Patterns Of Urbanization In Developing Counmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanization in the Developing World: Too Early or Too Slow?

Henderson

Turner

2020

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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We describe patterns of urbanization in the developing world and the extent to which they differ from the developed world. We consider the extent to which urbanization in the developing world can be explained by conventional models of spatial equilibrium. Despite their relative poverty, developing world cities are relatively highly productive and often provide good access to safe water, improved sanitation, schooling, and inoculations. In some parts of the world, they are home to a surprisingly small number of factory workers and a surprisingly large number of farmers. Developing world cities seem to do less well at protecting their residents from lifestyle diseases and crime, their female residents from domestic violence, and their children from illness. In thinking about these facts, we note that one strand of the literature focused on structural transformation has suggested that urbanization in the developing is occurring “too early,” while another strand argues that urbanization is occurring “too slow” to be consistent with conventional models of spatial equilibrium. Despite many differences between developing and developed world cities, our new results combined with those in the literature suggest that models of spatial equilibrium can be adapted as a useful guide to understanding the urbanization process in the developing world.

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Section: Some Distinctive Patterns Of Urbanization In Developing Counmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanization in the Developing World: Too Early or Too Slow?

Henderson

Turner

2020

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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“…3 Third, we study congestion effects in poor countries. Related studies are Rossi-Hansberg (2013, 2014), Duranton (2014a), Hanlon and Tian (2015), Hanlon (2016), Akbar and Duranton (2017), and Akbar et al (2018). Lastly, our quantitative analysis is able to deliver policy prescriptions.…”

Section: The Urban Mortality Transition and Poor-countrymentioning

confidence: 79%

The Urban Mortality Transition and Poor-Country Urbanization

Jedwab

Vollrath

2019

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

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Today, the world’s fastest-growing cities lie in low-income countries, unlike the historical norm. Also, unlike the “killer cities” of history, cities in low-income countries grow not just through in-migration but also through their own natural increase. First, we use novel historical data to document that many poor countries urbanized at the same time as the postwar urban mortality transition. Second, we develop a framework incorporating location choice with heterogeneity in demographics and congestion costs across locations to account for this. In the framework, people prefer to live in low-mortality locations, and the aggregate rate of population growth and the locational choice of individuals interact. Third, we calibrate this to data from a sample of poor countries and find that informal urban areas (e.g., slums) can absorb additional population more easily than other locations. We show that between 1950 and 2005 the urban mortality transition could have doubled the urbanization rate as well as the size of informal urban areas in this sample. Of these effects, one-third could be attributed to the amenity effect of lower urban mortality rates, while the remainder is due to higher population growth disproportionately pushing people into informal urban areas. Fourth, simulations suggest that family planning programs, as well as industrialization or urban infrastructure and institutions may be effective in slowing poor-country urbanization. (JEL I12, J11, N30, O15, O18, R11, R23)

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“…Such estimates could rely on in part on the administrative data we exploit, but could also combine them with innovative new data sources to measure congestion and reliability for both highways and transit, e.g. Akbar et al (2020). Related to congestion, most economists have a strong presumption that congestion pricing must be the main policy response to congestion.…”

Section: Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transportation Infrastructure in the US

Duranton¹,

Nagpal²,

Turner³

2020

Self Cite

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Support for massive investments in transportation infrastructure, possibly with a change in the share of spending on transit, seems widespread. Such proposals are often motivated by the belief that our infrastructure is crumbling, that infrastructure causes economic growth, that current funding regimes disadvantage rural drivers at the expense of urban public transit, or that capacity expansions will reduce congestion. In fact, most us transportation infrastructure is not deteriorating and the existing scientific literature and does not show that infrastructure creates growth or reduces congestion. However, current annual expenditure on public transit buses exceeds that on interstate construction and maintenance. A careful examination of how funding is allocated across modes is suggested by the evidence. Massive new expenditures are not.

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Mobility and Congestion in Urban India

Cited by 25 publications

References 15 publications

Urbanization in the Developing World: Too Early or Too Slow?

Urbanization in the Developing World: Too Early or Too Slow?

The Urban Mortality Transition and Poor-Country Urbanization

Transportation Infrastructure in the US

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