This article tests transport infrastructure‘s roads and railways subsectors impact on economic growth in the European Union during the 1990-2017 years time span. The latest public infrastructure investments trends in those subsectors are analyzed as well. Article’s empirical research encompasses all 28 European Union countries (at that time) data, and fills the gap of such researches in roads and railways subsectors case in the full European Union area. Proxy variables used for roads and railways subsectors are physical type, but with ability to encompass the usage of chosen infrastructure subsectors. It is a new feature in such type of researches, which usually uses either raw physical or raw monetary type of infrastructure variables. The research results show that both roads and railways subsectors have positive short run impact on economic growth in the European Union. Results are almost the same, with overall elasticity coefficients in both subsectors. Though post-2009 public in...

The achievement of sustainable mobility and the completion of a unified trans‐European transport network are two main targets of the common European Union (EU) transport policy. The selective modal distribution of the investments in transport infrastructure is among the factors that can facilitate their fulfilment. Specifically, the fast modernisation of the currently underdeveloped environmental friendly rail and maritime transport modes is essential. The paper argues that the substantial financial involvement of the EU has not promoted the balanced and rational distribution of the investments in transport infrastructure within Europe. This is particularly evident in the case of Greece, where underinvestment and mono‐modal priorities had characterised the national level policies. The emerging EU financial contribution has not managed to alter this unsustainable policy.

Infrastructure is widely recognized as a key ingredient in a country’s economic success. However many issues surrounding infrastructure management are not well analysed. This paper assess the performance of rail infrastructures management. Focusing on key European countries this study monitors the factors directly related to the effective allocation of resources. Results suggest that the outperforming system are the Swedish, characterised by reduced cost, and the German, marked by significant scale economics. The Italian case follows these two. The expenses for running the Spanish infrastructure are relatively low but this advantage is outweighed by weak traffic. If on one hand the cost of the British network appears to be above the average, on the other hand it is compensated by the intensive use of the network. The French infrastructure presents an average production cost along with moderate productivity; a remarkable average loading makes up for this performance gap. Main limitat...

Transport has long been considered central to urban and regional development, and to the concept of economic growth in general. The establishment of trade routes is an essential prerequisite for the expansion of market ranges. And as settlements grow, an efficient internal organisation of infrastructures is key to facilitate the efficient movements of people and goods. Distance and density remain the two most fundamental concepts in urban development theory. But of course today’s cities and regions are vastly different from the places we used to live in as little as fifty years ago and consequently the relationship between transport infrastructures and economic development has been dramatically redefined over the last half century. As we have moved from Fordist to post-Fordist and post-industrial production and consumption structures, wealth creation as a whole has become an increasingly complex and de-materialised concept. Successful modern economies are less and less based on heav...

Infrastructure development is a priority on policy agendas in the EU and worldwide, because of the very high investment needs in basic infrastructure, especially in lagging behind regions and countries. The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the infrastructural gaps in EU transition economies at national and, as far as possible, regional level for some infrastructure sectors: transport, telecommunication, environment and energy. The analysis suggests that, on average, internal divergences in the infrastructures’ endowment are present between the urbanised capital cities regions and the peripheral and rural areas, in all the Member States; yet, the density and quality of such endowment is significantly higher in the Western countries and limited in the Eastern ones.

The paper examines the intensity of the infrastructure impact (roads, port infrastructure, air transport, electricity supply) on improving competitiveness quantified by Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDP pc) of twelve Emerging and Developing European countries according to the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI ) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the methodology for the period 2007 - 2017. The impact of infrastructure as one of the basic factors of competitiveness on GDP growth per capita was seen through single (linear and exponential) and panel data linear regression analyses. The results of the research showed that the development of the infrastructure has a very positive impact on GDP growth per capita. Positive interdependence is far more evident in six economically less developed Emerging and developing European countries that were (Croatia) or are the current members of CEFTA (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) in comparison to the six r...

The public expenditure on railways is largely unexplored in Europe. This is surprising because the size of government financial support to the industry is remarkable. Filling a dozen years of missing information, this paper rebuilds the total public spending on the Italian railway since 1992 making it comparable. This research complements a significant lack of information of public interest since these data have been published from 1966 until 2001; year of the last data release. From then the extent of public support to the industry has remained indefinite. Our results serve: scholars aimed at comparing such expenses with other countries, policy makers aimed at taking superior data-supported decisions when it comes to budgeting and industry professionals for intelligence purposes. Thus, reducing the long-lasting asymmetric information in this domain-a key threaten to the sector growth. Results of this paper enable a proper comparison of the government spending on railways among different countries such as Italy, France and Great Britain as an exercise.