OECD Economics Department Working Papers

ISSN :
1815-1973 (online)
DOI :
10.1787/18151973
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Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.
 

The Performance of Road Transport Infrastructure and its Links to Policies You or your institution have access to this content

Authors:
Henrik Braconier1, Mauro Pisu1, Debra Bloch1
Author Affiliations
  • 1: OECD, France

Publication Date
28 Jan 2013
Bibliographic information
No.:
1016
Pages
88
DOI
10.1787/5k4ddxjvpfr5-en

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Despite the economic importance of the road transport sector, there is no systematic cross-country evidence on the sector’s efficiency. This paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing the social efficiency of the road transport sector, including non-market inputs – such as travel time – and negative outputs – such as accidents and emissions. This framework is then used to analyse efficiency in 32 OECD countries. Data issues in terms of availability, quality and comparability are significant, and the empirical results have to be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, there is fairly robust evidence that social efficiency is low in a number of OECD countries. The low efficiency suggests that substantial room for input savings exists in these countries. A framework for analysing how road transport policies may impact performance is developed, but a scarcity of data on policy settings currently limits the scope for empirically connecting the two.
Keywords:
benchmarking, road, DEA, infrastructure, efficiency, transport policy
JEL Classification:
  • D61: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Allocative Efficiency; Cost–Benefit Analysis
  • D62: Microeconomics / Welfare Economics / Externalities
  • H41: Public Economics / Publicly Provided Goods / Public Goods
  • H54: Public Economics / National Government Expenditures and Related Policies / Infrastructures; Other Public Investment and Capital Stock