Impacts of Infrastructure Projects on Competitiveness

The relationship between infrastructure investment and competitiveness is currently not clearly understood and under considerable discussion, especially where it concerns wider economic benefits. Given the methodological and analytical problems with the assessment of the benefit and cost of transport infrastructure, the I-C-EU project is set up to explore several areas of knowledge at the same time. It integrates methodological improvements, collection of case studies and modelling. I-C-EU explores the methodology and makes a clear definition of competitiveness and the sources of wider economic benefits. Furthermore, I-C-EU constructs a database on critical transport projects across the EU, with a clear impact on competitiveness and regional growth. Finally, I-C-EU explores the current set of modelling tools that are used in the European Union (EU). This paper presents the intermediate results of the project.