Abstract
Transport infrastructures are public goods. Their importance is demonstrated in the literature since the seminal works of the endogenous growth theory, new economic geography, as well as empirical studies conducted in several countries. Our research focuses on the transport infrastructure in developing countries with an application to the case of Morocco. This thesis is divided in two parts. The first one highlights the role of transport infrastructure in the economy through a review of theoretical and empirical literature and the presentation of different econometric modeling approaches. Then, we study the case of Morocco by using econometric approach of vector error correction model to analyze the long-term dynamic relationships between GDP, public capital and the causality effects. Then, we demonstrate with an autoregressive model the impact of highway investments on GDP / capita and improving accessibility. The second part of our research focuses on the effects of transport infrastructure on the economic growth of 16 Moroccan regions, and the differences between these regions as a result of road and highway public capital allocation. We follow in our research Charlot (1999), Charlot and Schmitt (2002) on French regions, and Marquez, Ramajo and Hewings (2011) applied on Spanish provinces. After, we study the evolution of urban primacy in Morocco by focusing our analysis to the structural role of transport infrastructure. We use gravity models to explore spatial interactions between Moroccan regions. Finally, we are interested in the region of Tangier in Morocco. We study the case of the Tangier-Med port as transport infrastructure. We analyze the impacts of this port on the economic dynamics of this region and the location of productive activities.