Infrastructure networks are a central element for the integration of a country's economic and territorial system, making possible its logistical connectivity. A greater investment in these networks is directly related to an increase in the supply of logistic services, which accompanied by a sustainable demand and the consequent increase of the connectivity, has positive effects in the expansion of its hinterland.
This study seeks to contribute to knowledge on the effects of investments in infrastructure and logistic services for the economic development of the hinterland. It also aims to be a contribution to the development of proposals and implementation of measures that improve competitiveness, sustainability and generate greater economical development in a country.
Investment in logistical infrastructure in Argentina has been low for the last 25 years, like the average in the region. This has led to a shortage in the provision and services associated with transport, causing stress in the infrastructure sector.
Despite this situation, dynamics are distinguished in Argentina that demonstrate the relationship between the level of growth of investment in infrastructure, through increases in investments in port infrastructure and waterways. That has produced an expansive effect on the hinterland, in matters of grains; and a consequent expansion or contraction of the hinterland, due to the lack of investment in infrastructure in the central region of Argentina, which produced a contraction effect of the hinterland, in the matter of containers.
This study aims to present how the dynamics in which the increase of investments in port and inland waterways infrastructure in Argentina has produced an effect of expansion on its hinterland. For this, the development of an agricultural area is analyzed, assuming that investments in infrastructure contribute to reduction of costs and increases in productivity It also suggests that the provision of infrastructure with minors costs and operating times and better and more reliable services depends not only on the physical infrastructure but also on the market conditions created by the transport policies and the economic regulation of the same, and the characteristics of the market transport operation.
In a first stage, estimations are carried out through ordinary least squares (OLS) and later an autoregressive vector (VAR) will be estimated. Both will be annually estimated, for the period between 1969-2015 and natural logarithms will be applied to all the variables included in the model.
The OLS model estimates the variables of agricultural production depending on the depth (measured by feet of the navigable waterway), the climate (measured by the intensity of the rains) and finally the weighted price of the three main commodities of Argentine agricultural production.
The estimations that are going to be presented in this document represent the reaction of the production to a change in the infrastructure, under the supposed caeteris paribus for the rest of the variables. However, it is important to emphasize that the very nature of the VAR model is relevant to the objectives of the analysis, given that it considers the interactions (endogenous issues) between the variables that are determinants for the production, and that finally define the effects they cause.