Big Social Savings in a Small Laggard Economy: Railroad-Led Growth in Brazil
研究了19世纪至20世纪初巴西铁路发展对经济增长的贡献，发现货运收益巨大，社会回报率表明投资并未过度，且铁路为后续增长奠定了基础。
Railroad development had a profound impact in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Brazil. Direct benefits were small for passengers, but large for freight services, and contributed heavily to the transition from stagnation to growth. Domestic-use activities received a differentially large stimulus. Estimates of the social rate of return reveal that Brazil did not overinvest in railroads. A different allocation of subsidies to railroad capital could have generated additional gains. Backward linkages did little for industry, but the “leakage” attributable to imported inputs was modest. Institutional externalities were mixed. By 1913 railroads had paved the way for dramatically improved economic growth.