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Priority Roads: the Political Economy of Africa's Interior-to-Coast Roads

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  • Bonfatti, Roberto
  • Gu, Yuan
  • Poelhekke, Steven

Abstract

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well placed to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in West Africa in 1965-2014. Controlling for geography and comparative advantage, we find that autocracies focused more than democracies on connecting metal and mineral deposits to ports, resulting in more interior-to-coast networks. This deposit-to-port bias was only present for deposits located on the elite's ethnic homeland, suggesting that Africa's interior-to-coast roads were the result of ethnic favoritism by autocracies.

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  • Bonfatti, Roberto & Gu, Yuan & Poelhekke, Steven, 2020. "Priority Roads: the Political Economy of Africa's Interior-to-Coast Roads," CEPR Discussion Papers 15354, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15354
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    Cited by:

    1. Abbasi ,Mansoureh & Lebrand,Mathilde Sylvie Maria & Mongoue,Arcady Bluette & Pongou,Roland & Zhang,Fan, 2022. "Roads, Electricity, and Jobs: Evidence of Infrastructure Complementarity in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9976, The World Bank.
    2. Krantz, Sebastian, 2024. "Optimal investments in Africa's road network," Kiel Working Papers 2272, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), revised 2024.
    3. Lorz, Oliver, 2020. "Investment in trade facilitating infrastructure: A political-economy analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    4. Lebrand,Mathilde Sylvie Maria, 2021. "Corridors without Borders in West Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9855, The World Bank.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political economy; Democracy; Infrastructure; Natural resources; Development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development

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