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Wider Economic Benefits of Transport Systems - How Norway is Working with it
James Odeck Professor, Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Norway
Anne Kjerkreit Advisor, Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Norway
Wider Economic Benefits (WEBs) are benefits caused by improvement in transport systems and accrue in form of productivity gains due to agglomeration effects, increased outputs in markets with imperfect competition and improvements in labour supply. The conventional Benefit-Cost Analyses (BCA) has traditionally ignored the WEBs. In the recent years, however, the international literature has recognized the existence of WEBs and that they should be accounted for and added to the benefits captured in conventional BCAs. In this paper, we share: (i) How Norway institutionalised accounting for WEBs in guidelines for impact assessments and, (ii) the approach/framework that Norway has developed for assessing WEBs.