Data and Code for: Infrastructure Costs

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Leah Brooks, George Washington University; Zachary Liscow, Yale University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
data			04/29/2022 02:02:AM
from_leah			04/29/2022 02:16:AM
output			04/29/2022 02:02:AM
programs			04/29/2022 02:02:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	484.2 KB	04/28/2022 10:33:PM
Restricted data Instructions.pdf	application/pdf	94.5 KB	04/28/2022 10:02:PM

Citation:

Brooks, Leah, and Liscow, Zachary . Data and Code for: Infrastructure Costs: Brooks Liscow Replication Package. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-03-09. https://doi.org/10.3886/E144281V1-154303

To view the citation for the overall project, see http://doi.org/10.3886/E144281V1.

Project Description

Summary: There is widespread consensus that US infrastructure quality has been on the decline. In response, politicians across the ideological spectrum have called for increased infrastructure spending. Although the cost of infrastructure determines how much physical output each dollar of spending yields, we know surprisingly little about these costs across time and place. We help to fill this gap by using data we digitized on the Interstate highway system—one of the nation’s most valuable infrastructure assets—to document spending per mile over the history of its construction. We make two main contributions. First, we find that real spending per mile on Interstate construction increased more than three-fold from the 1960s to the 1980s. The increase does not appear to come from states building “easy” miles first, since the increase is roughly unchanged conditional on pre-existing observable geographic cost determinants. Second, we provide suggestive evidence of the determinants of the increase in spending per mile. Increases in per-unit labor or materials prices are inconsistent with the pattern of the increase. But increases in income and housing prices explain about half of the increase in spending per mile. We find suggestive evidence that the rise of “citizen voice” in government decision-making caused increased expenditure per mile.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: infrastructure; interstate; highways; construction

JEL Classification:
      H40 Publicly Provided Goods: General
      H50 National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General
      H70 State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations: General
      K00 Law and Economics: General
      N40 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: General, International, or Comparative
      N70 Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, Technology, and Other Services: General, International, or Comparative
      N90 Regional and Urban History: General
      R40 Transportation Economics: General

Geographic Coverage: Continental United States

Universe: One-mile segments of interstate highways in the United States of the and their associated physical, cost, geographic, socioeconomic, and political characteristics.

Data Type(s): aggregate data; census/enumeration data; geographic information system (GIS) data

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2023-03-09]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.