Institutional Innovation and Infrastructure Investment: An Evaluation of the Turnpike System in Eighteenth Century England

This paper investigates whether turnpike trusts increased road infrastructure spending in eighteenth century England. A turnpike trust was a non-profit organization that financed road improvements by levying tolls and issuing debt. They replaced the authority of parishes and townships, which financed road improvements using local property taxes. The paper uses a new data set to show that the turnpike system substantially increased road expenditure. It also introduces supporting evidence from a ‘natural’ experiment, in which roads remained under the authority of parishes and townships, because petitions to create a turnpike trust failed to receive passage from Parliament