Lunchtime Seminar Series 2011-2012
Seminars take place on Wednesdays, 1pm-2pm, in room G15, St. Mary’s (6 on map), unless otherwise indicated.
ALL WELCOME
An access guide for St Mary’s building can be found here. If you have additional access requirements, please let us know.
Thursday 10th November, 13.00 – 14.00 (Aberdeen University, Kings College Campus, Old Aberdeen, Room MACROBERT 302)
Dr. Cameron Gordon (Associate Professor Economics, University of Canberra)
“Agglomeration economies and other spatial impacts of infrastructure: do we know what we're looking for (or at)?”
Abstract
Traditional benefit-cost analysis and other program evaluation techniques applied to public infrastructure investment tend to focus on relatively narrowly conceived measures of market benefit (e.g. a transport project's reductions in travel-times that will be generated for travellers); these are sometimes supplemented with market valuations of broader social impacts (e.g. lowered Greenhouse Gas Emissions). In many cases benefit measures such as these are more than sufficient, especially when considering increments to existing transport and other infrastructure networks. However, public infrastructure, especially transport, can have significant spatial effects such as expansion in effective access to markets for goods and services and an ability to achieve agglomeration and other spatial economies across those markets. Agglomeration economies in particular are inconsistently understood and often incompletely specified. This presentation discusses how these types of effects can be missed by traditional methods and how methods might be enhanced to account for them.
About the speaker
Cameron Gordon is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Canberra's Faculty of Business and Government and currently a Visiting Professor at the Imperial College of London Centre for Transport Studies. Professor Gordon has previously been a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney Institute for Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) and a Visiting Fellow in Public Policy at the City University of New York (CUNY) Research Foundation. He has had prior academic appointments in Finance with CUNY and in Public Policy and Adminstration with the University of Southern California. Prior to entering academia, Professor Gordon had a long public service career with appointments at the US Congress Joint Committee on Taxation, the US Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and the City of New York Municipal Water Finance Authority. His research interests include transport and economic development, urban passenger and freight transport and infrastructure privatisation and PPPs.