Políticas de transporte e desigualdade espacial na economia brasileira

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the effect of the expansion of the interstate highway network on the aggregate and disaggregated distribution of economic activity in peripheral municipalities of Brazil. The organization of economic activity within the Brazilian geographical space has historically been related to transformations in the transportation sector, particularly in the road transport mode. The development of an integrated national transportation network, starting in the second half of the 20th century, coincided with the weakening of isolated settlements, which lost significant shares of national employment. In contemporary times, interstate highways cross the borders of more than half of the municipalities in the country, with stretches distributed across all states of the federation. The theoretical literature within the context of the Economic Geography highlights that transportation costs are a fundamental aspect of firms' location decisions, and consequently, the migratory behavior of the mobile labor force. Thus, the econometric estimation methodology will be used through instrumental variables to capture exogenous variations in infrastructure, based on historical plans aimed at linking state capitals to the Federal District and addressing other needs of an economic-military nature. Furthermore, outdated input-output technical coefficients will also be used to capture the sectoral dependence on transportation services and, thus, to characterize potential channels of transmission of infrastructural development. The database will also include a set of quantitative and qualitative information gathered from census microdata and digital archives from public institutions, which describe the evolution of local economies and national infrastructures between 1970 and 2010, respectively. The estimation results show that access to interstate highways has positive and statistically significant effects on employment and income shares in the treated municipalities, with the largest impacts observed in industrial activities of lower technological intensity. These findings validate the theoretical reference model, Koster-Tabuchi-Thisse (KTT), which predicts a positive return from integration in the predominance of long-haul diseconomies, which was estimated to be the case for Brazilian highways. In summary, the thesis provides insights into how national transportation corridors condition the growth and specialization of small markets spread across large urban centers.