Street Pavement: Results from an Infrastructure Experiment in Mexico

Abstract

Urban peripheries in many developing countries lack basic local public goods like street pavement, water, sewerage and electricity. We design an experiment of street pavement provision in a Mexican urban area and estimate impacts on a set of indicators obtained from a household survey. Our ndings show that houses in streets that were paved increased substantially in value, by 15% according to professional appraisals, and by 24% according to homeowners. Households living in streets that were paved obtained more credit, had higher per capita expenditures, increased motor vehicle ownership and were more likely to have made home improvements.