Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP16139
Authors: Oliver Vanden Eynde; Liam Wren-Lewis
Abstract: Complementarities between infrastructure projects have been understudied. Our paper examines interactions in the impacts of large-scale road construction, electrification, and mobile phone coverage programs in rural India. We find strong evidence of complementary impacts between roads and electricity on agricultural production: dry season cropping increases significantly when villages receive both, but not when they receive one without the other. These complementarities are associated with a shift of cropping patterns towards market crops and with improved economic conditions. In contrast, we find no consistent evidence of complementarities for the mobile coverage program.
Keywords: infrastructure; complementarities; agriculture
JEL Codes: O13; O18; Q15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| joint provision of electricity and road access (L94) | increased dry season cropping (Q15) |
| electrification (L94) | improved water management (Q25) |
| road access (R42) | enhanced market access (F15) |
| roads + electricity (R42) | increased agricultural productivity (Q11) |
| mobile phone coverage (L96) | agricultural productivity (Q11) |