Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15354
Authors: Roberto Bonfatti; Yuan Gu; Steven Poelhekke
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.
Keywords: political economy; democracy; infrastructure; natural resources; development
JEL Codes: P16; P26; D72; H54; O18; Q32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| autocracy on elites' ethnic homelands (P26) | deposit-to-port bias (F21) |
| political institutions (D02) | road paving (R42) |
| road paving (R42) | ethnic favoritism (J15) |
| autocracy (D73) | deposit-to-port bias (F21) |