Economic Growth and Spatial Analysis in Transport Corridors: A Preliminary Review

The construction and development of international transport corridors have become a means of cross-border space governance, promoting the flexibility of international industrial chains and supply chains. Due to the uncertainty of cooperation, the development of international transport corridors entails a long-term and complex system of engineering. Transport corridors can generate wider economic benefits and costs through their effects on a potentially diverse set of development outcomes, such as economic growth, poverty, jobs, equity, environmental quality, and economic resilience. The focus on roads, rails, and waterways is justified, as transport corridors based on these modes have clearer potential for economic spillovers than, for example, airline routes. The current paper describes a multi-method approach involving spatial and non-spatial analysis to investigate spatial disparity along a proposed corridor and examine its integration within the existing settlement structure. The conceptual structure for the review is guided by a simple canonical model describing the policy maker’s problem in maximizing the net wider economic benefits of corridors. The meta-analysis confirms that characteristics of individual studies, as well as the placement and design of transport infrastructures, systematically influence the findings of corridor studies. It also shows that, on average, estimated impacts of corridor interventions on economic welfare and equity tend to be beneficial, while they are often detrimental to environmental quality, and possibly also to social inclusion.