The Impact of Infrastructure on Development Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the infrastructure research done over more than three decades, using a database of close to a thousand estimates from 201 papers conducted between 1983–2022, reporting outcome elasticities. The analysis casts a wide net to include the transport, energy, and digital or information and communications technology sectors and the whole set of outcomes covered in the literature, including output, employment and wages, inequality and poverty, trade, education and health, population, and environmental aspects. The results allow for an update of the underlying parameters of interest, the “true” underlying infrastructure elasticities, accounting for publication bias, as well as for heterogeneity stemming from both study design and context, with a particular focus on policy relevant subsectors and developing countries.