Throughout the years, the European Commission has allocated significant financial resources to road infrastructure construction, based on the belief that it would boost, socioeconomic development. However, literature evidence shows it is not consensual whether those investment policies will yield the expected outcomes. The main goal of this work is to shed light on where, and to what extent, accessibility changes due to road infrastructure construction might contribute to boost socioeconomic development at the municipal scale and regional cohesion, resorting to a case study consisting of the municipalities located in the Center Region of Portugal. The analysis uses spatial statistical methods and considers both space and time-lagged variables simultaneously, while controlling for endogeneity, spatial autocorrelation and demographic variables. Results show that accessibility changes induced by 20 years of road infrastructure construction had, in general, a positive impact on the development of the Center Region municipalities. However, depending on how accessibility is defined, negative impacts were also reported, as well as impacts that depend on geographic location. It is suggested that these latter impacts might be related to population migration within the Center Region. Concerning cohesion, no significant impacts of accessibility changes were found.

中文翻译：

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可达性变化对当地发展的影响：空间方法


多年来，欧盟委员会为道路基础设施建设分配了大量财政资源，相信这将促进社会经济发展。然而，文献证据表明，这些投资政策是否会产生预期结果尚未达成共识。这项工作的主要目标是通过对位于葡萄牙中部地区。该分析使用空间统计方法，同时考虑空间和时间滞后变量，同时控制内生性、空间自相关和人口变量。结果表明，20年道路基础设施建设带来的可达性变化总体上对中部地区城市的发展产生了积极影响。然而，根据可访问性的定义方式，也报告了负面影响以及取决于地理位置的影响。有人认为，后者的影响可能与中部地区的人口迁移有关。关于凝聚力，没有发现可访问性变化的显着影响。