Transport Infrastructure and Economic Growth: New Evidence from Tunisia an ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

Abstract

The achievement of an effective infrastructure, reliable and fair, is essential for economic growth. Indeed, the transport infrastructure is essential to the prosperity of regions. To investigate the relationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth, we use the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL), we find that transport infrastructure is cointegrated with economic performance, indicating the affirmed presence of long-run equilibrium relationships among them. We use annual data for the period from 1980 to 2013. The study found that the transport infrastructure and investment in transport infrastructure in Tunisia have a significant positive contribution to growth, which shows that each impact is strong and statistically significant. The Tunisian experience suggests that it is necessary to design an economic policy that will improve the transport infrastructure and to increase investment made to the sector for sustainable economic growth in Tunisia. It is necessary to improve the existing road and rail networks. JEL Classification: F63, L91, R41