Transportation Investment and Economic Development: A Case Study from South Korea

This study analyzes the impact of the opening of the West Coast Expressway in Korea on the location of new manufacturing establishments. The expressway opened in December 2001 and connects the Seoul Metropolitan area with Jeolla province. The major construction goals with the expressway were to stimulate industrial development of nearby regions and improve the traffic flow of existing industrial complexes. The analysis is conducted using panel data for the ten year period of 1997 through 2006 developed from the annual Korea Mining and Manufacturing Survey and other sources. The analysis uses a fine spatial resolution based on three non-overlapping, small spatial administrative units: city wards (Korean: dong), towns (Korean: eup), and rural districts (Korea: myeon). This leads to 2,029 observations (one for each spatial unit) per year, or a total of 20,290 observations in the whole 10 year panel. The analysis is performed with a fixed-effect negative binomial panel regression. The opening of the West Coast Expressway has a significant positive impact on the location decision of new manufacturing establishments. The average wage of employed workers in local manufacturing establishments is an important location determinant for new manufacturing establishment. The number of employed workers in existing manufacturing establishments of the local area is a highly significant positive location determinant for new manufacturing establishments, indicating agglomeration effects.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB40(2) Integrated Transportation and Land Use Modeling.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Kim, Hyungtai
  • Ulfarsson, Gudmundur F
  • Ahn, Sanghoon
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Economic development; Expressways; Industrial location; Investments; Manufacturing; Regression analysis; Spatial analysis
• Geographic Terms: South Korea
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01516412
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0734
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 28 2014 1:32PM