WP 0: Project Management
WP leader: TØI
Objective: To ensure the efficient management of resources throughout the lifetime of the project. The management group will consist of the project manager and the WP leaders. The project management will be overseen by the International Scientific Advisory Group and the Industry user Group.
WP 1: Theoretical foundations of economic impacts from agglomeration
WP leader: Vista
Objective: To develop a computationally tractable theoretical framework that can be tested by means of micro-econometric analysis on available Norwegian data in WP 2 and WP 3.
WP 2: Economic impacts of agglomeration impulses from transport infrastructure investments
WP lead: Menon
Objective: Builds on the theoretical foundation from WP1 and provides new empirical insights based on a more fit empirical design. We will conduct micro-econometric studies on a highly detailed dataset mapping the location of all firms and workers at the zip code level in Norway, as well as the travelling time between these zones. We intend to exploit information on new transport infrastructure projects and route networks for public transportation that are not motivated by the productivity potential or similar concerns as sources of exogenous variation. Exogeneity will be identified through both document studies and exogeneity tests.
WP 3: Freight transport and spatial distribution of productivity effects
WP lead: TØI
Objective: In this WP we look closer at productivity effects in industrial sectors induced by investments in infrastructure, taking into account concerns for causal identification. We employ a holistic view of the transport system, taking into account network effects in other transport modes and the spatial distribution of wider economic impacts via freight transport to more remote regions.
WP 4: Multiple externalities and policy instruments
WP leader: Vista
Objective: Policy advice and knowledge on the role of public investments in transport, taking into account the interaction between agglomeration externalities, environmental externalities and congestion externalities in the urban transport system, as well as technology and policy instruments affecting the system. The studies will be done in a theoretically consistent, stylized model of the urban transport system, calibrated to literature econometric estimates and data for the Oslo or Bergen regions. The model will contain agglomeration air pollution/climate externalities as basis for studies of the interaction between positive market productivity and negative environmental values. Further, it will include congestion externalities, increasing returns to scale, existing levies and subsidies on purchasing cars, existing levies/subsidies on operating/driving cars, buses, commuter trains. The model may contain subsidies towards research/development/innovation/marketing as potential efficiency instruments to correct externalities, as well as freight transport, sea transport, and link to the national macro-economic models available to the research team (TØI SCGE (Hansen and Johansen 2016), Vista-Menon NOREG (Grünfeld, Aalen et al. 2015)).
WP 5: Synthesis, knowledge building and policy recommendations
WP lead: TØI
Output and contribution to the primary research objective: Summary report, presentations at relevant seminars and work-shops. Direct input into the transport appraisal guidelines, relevant for strategic location decisions for firms and industries.
WP 6: Project Dissemination
WP lead: TØI
Objective: Ensure dissemination according to the dissemination plan.
