Do authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones? Empirical evidence for Africa

Tobias Broich

China Economic Review, 2017, vol. 46, issue C, 180-207

Abstract: This study is part of an emerging literature that aims to shed light on China's development finance activities in Africa using quantitative estimation techniques. This paper empirically investigates whether African authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones. I use four different measures of democracy/autocracy which allows me to check whether my results depend on the specific indicator chosen. The OLS results suggest that Chinese development finance does not systematically flow to more authoritarian countries, controlling for strategic, economic, political, institutional and geographic confounding factors. The results are not driven by the specific democracy indicator used in the analysis. The findings remain virtually unchanged if I reduce the sample to Sub-Saharan Africa only. Furthermore, the results stand up to several robustness checks, including FE, RE and instrumental variable estimation.

Keywords: Development economics; Political economy; Public policy; Development finance; Foreign aid; China; Africa; Autocracy; Democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 H10 O11 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:46:y:2017:i:c:p:180-207

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2017.09.006

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