Inversión pública en infraestructura y crecimiento regional en Perú, 2005–2020: un análisis basado en técnicas de aprendizaje automático causal

In contrast to the extensive literature on the impacts of investment in public infrastructure on regional growth and based on an experimental design with Machine Learning techniques, this work examines the possible causality of said impacts in a middle-income developing country, Peru, where subnational governments still depend on transfers from the central government for their investments. Using the Economic Transparency databases of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Peru (MEF, 2024), the results suggest that public investments in infrastructure (total and components) in the three levels of government (central, regional, and local) They do not cause regional growth in the 24 regions (departments) of Peru in the period 2005-2020. Such growth appears to depend on standard factors such as income derived from natural resources, capital investments, and the labor force.