According to Baumol’s Cost Disease in some productive activities that are labor intensive and where labor saving technological change is low or absent, labor productivity tends to be stagnant. However, since these sectors compete for the same inputs, their wage bill increases according to the average productivity growth in the economy. As a consequence, production in stagnant sectors becomes more expensive relative to that of others. Examples of sectors affected by Baumol’s disease include the performing arts, health, education and some public services. Some recent literature for developed countries suggests that public transport is also affected by the cost disease. In this article we present similar evidence suggesting that Baumol’s cost disease might be present in transit services in several cities from four Latin American countries, with consequences in terms of costs and productivity that are probably made worse by rising urban congestion. We also analyze to what extent technical progress and gains in aggregate efficiency can offset the consequences of Baumol’s cost disease. Finally, we discuss policy options to overcome these problems, refer to some possible limitations of our analysis and propose avenues for future research.

根据鲍莫尔（Baumol）的《成本病》，在一些劳动密集型的生产活动中，或者在省力技术变革很少或没有的情况下，劳动生产率往往停滞不前。但是，由于这些部门争夺相同的投入，因此它们的工资根据经济中平均生产率的增长而增加。结果，停滞部门的生产相对于其他部门而言变得更加昂贵。受鲍莫尔氏病影响的部门包括表演艺术，保健，教育和一些公共服务。发达国家的一些最新文献表明，公共交通也受到成本疾病的影响。在本文中，我们提供了类似的证据，表明来自四个拉丁美洲国家/地区的一些城市的公交服务中可能存在鲍莫尔病的成本病，在成本和生产力方面的后果可能会由于城市拥堵状况的加剧而恶化。我们还分析了技术进步和总效率的提高可以在多大程度上抵消Baumol成本病的后果。最后，我们讨论了克服这些问题的政策选择，参考了我们分析的一些可能局限性，并提出了未来研究的途径。