"Public Infrastructure Investment: A Bridge to Productivity Growth? Public Capital and Economic Growth, ; New Federal Spending for Infrastructure: Should We Let This Genie Out of the Bottle?

This brief presents contrasting views on the effects of public infrastructure investment on private sector productivity. Aschauer states that the slower rate of productivity growth since the early 1970s--coupled with an aging population, the declining proportion of workers to the total population, and other demographic factors--poses a dilemma for policymakers interested in strengthening the long-term relative position of the United States in an increasingly competitive global economic environment. He considers public infrastructure to be a factor in production and the decline in public capital to be responsible for part of the productivity slowdown. In contrast, Holtz-Eakin dismisses the conventional arguments for a federal infrastructure program by asserting that a large-scale public infrastructure program has no appreciable effect on productivity growth; in the current fiscal climate of scarce federal resources, a federal infrastructure program is not consistent with the goal of deficit reduction; there are better infrastructure strategies than new spending and massive construction programs; and policies aimed at increasing private rather than public investment will have a more positive impact on U.S. competitiveness.

Full-Depth Recycling (FDR): INDOT Perspectives, Lessons Learned and Future

Full depth reclamation with cement is a process that recycles an existing failed road into a new cement treated base, fixing pavement problems at the subgrade layer. In addition to providing a stable base, this process is cost effective. INDOT has completed several FDR with cement projects. Come learn about successful outcomes with parking lots, county roads, state roads, and Interstates

Introduction and Review of New IDM Chapter 304 Comprehensive Pavement Analysis

INDOT’s new pavement design analysis chapter for the Indiana Design Manual was adopted in 2013. It incorporates the INDOT’s shift to MEPDG-based pavement design analysis and presents a very different set of expectations from previous documents. This session will present the philosophy, construct, ramifications, and professional service expectations specified and implied in the new chapter

INDOT\u27s Recap of Thin Concrete Overlay Test Program Lessons Learned To Date

Indiana has designed, bid, and built multiple thin fiber-reinforced concrete overlay across the state. This presentation provides a recap of lessons learned from the near 1.5 million sys of thin PCC overlay projects built

Sticking it Out: Entrepreneurial Survival and Liquidity Constraints

This paper analyzes the role of liquidity constraints in the formation of new entrepreneurial enterprises. The basic empirical strategy is to determine whether an individual's wealth affects the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and the conditional amounts of depreciable assets, ceteris paribus. If so, liquidity constraints are likely to be present. To be successful, such a research strategy requires a measure of asset variation that is both precisely measured and exogenous to the entrepreneurial decision. Our data are uniquely well-suited for this purpose. The sample consists of the 1981 and 1985 federal income tax returns of a group of people who received inheritances in 1982 and 1983, along with information on the size of those inheritances from a matched set of estate tax returns. Hence, we can examine how the exogenous receipt of capital affects the decision to become an entrepreneur and important financial characteristics of new enterprises. Our results suggest that the size of the inheritance has a substantial effect on the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and that conditional on becoming an entrepreneur, the size of the inheritance has a statistically significant and quantitatively important effect on the amount of capital employed. These findings are consistent with the presence of liquidity constraints.

Full-Depth Reclamation (FDR): More INDOT Perspectives, Lessons Learned & Future

Full-depth reclamation (FDR) with cement is a construction process in which worn out flexible pavement is pulverized and left in place, mixed with cement and the underlying subgrade, compacted, graded, and paved over. FDR results in great savings because the old roadway is recycled, not removed, and the finished cementtreated base can be incorporated as part of the new pavement design. In this presentation we discuss design, construction, testing, and public and private case studies