Authors:

  • Richard Hornbeck

Excerpt

Railroads and American Economic Growth: A "Market Access" Approach. Richard Hornbeck, July 2013, Paper. "This paper examines the historical impact of railroads on the American economy. Expansion of the railroad network may have affected all counties directly or indirectly – an econometric challenge that arises in many empirical settings. However, the total impact on each county is captured by changes in that county's “market access,” a reduced-form expression derived from general equilibrium trade theory. We measure counties' market access by constructing a network database of railroads and waterways and calculating lowest-..."  Link