Keywords: Urban Development, Accessibility, Highways, Roman Roads
Economic effects of transport infrastructure are often expressed in terms of productivity
and employment differentials, whereas comparatively less attention has been devoted to impacts
on firm location and birth. The aim of this paper is to contribute to existing literature
by studying the construction of the highway network in Italy in a counterfactual approach. In
particular, the role of endogeneity of exit location is explicitly considered and addressed by
means of a new variable measuring the geography of the Roman network. Our results indicate
that an improvement in accessibility as proxied by the location of an exit in the city has a positive
impact on the employment rate and on plant birth, with larger impacts in Center-northern
and smaller cities.