Highways and local development: insights from two decades of investments

This paper examines the influence of new highways on local development in Spain across two distinct periods of initial infrastructure investment in network development and later network extensions. The results show interesting differences. In the 1990s, when the basic network was completed, new highways generally showed a positive relationship with local population growth in municipalities that had seen their access improved, although with most benefits concentrated in urban areas. In contrast, for the network extensions during the first decade of the 2000s, the results suggest a negative relationship with local population growth in rural areas.