Infrastructure and Economic Growth in Spain, 1845–1935

Infrastructure investment and Spanish economic growth, 1850–1935

“…140-141) have indicated that, despite the social saving evidence, the low density of use and the lack of profitability of the Spanish railroads constitute powerful proofs of their economic failure. On the other hand, further research has provided substantially lower estimates of the social savings of the Spanish railroads in the late nineteenth century (Barquín, 1999;Herranz-Loncán, 2002). However, at the same time, Herranz-Loncán (2005a) has pointed out that the social savings do not capture all the impact of the railroads, due to the difficulty to measure TFP spillovers.…”