Infrastructure, private expectations and investment

ABSTRACT Economic literature has highlighted that infrastructure investment shows positive externalities which foster the economic growth. Based upon the Post-Keynesian perspective, the aims of this article are twofold: i) to explain the interactions among infrastructure, conventions, expectations and aggregate private investment, summarized in what Keynes called technically social investment; ii) to show in theoretical terms that discontinuities of infrastructure investments reduce the sensitivities of private aggregate investment in relation to its determinants, with economic policy implications. In the Post-Keynesian view, private investment is volatile and sensitive to changes in conventions and expectations. We show that infrastructure spending stimulates private investments because it reduces uncertainty and coordinates the emergence of private conventions and expectations that foster private investments.