The endowment with high quality transport infrastructure significantly influences the regional economic performance. In order to scrutinize the key role of transport infrastructure, this paper aims at measuring the relative importance of transport infrastructure compared with other immobile production factors - namely telecommunication, level of educational, recreation area, centrality and the achieved level of technology. A regression analysis finally allows for a detailed bottleneck analysis and the identification of over- and under-average performing regions within the European Union (EU). Thereby the study focuses on the so-called eligible regions of the EU, which are characterized by a GDP per capita higher than 75% of the EU average. However, due to the heterogeneity of the NUTS 2 regions, the particular role of transport infrastructure is analyzed in further detail on NUTS 3 level. The study shows, that a high quality of the transport system is indeed important for high density regions and needed to stabilize their growth. Vice versa, the relative importance of this factor is decreasing with lower density. Bottleneck analysis shows that rural regions lagging behind only will profit from high quality transport investments if the latter are accompanied by substantial investments in other social capital.
Abstract