The Distributional impact of dams: Evidence from cropland productivity in Africa

Eric Strobl () and Robert Strobl
Additional contact information
Robert Strobl: IES - JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability - JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Ispra]

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: We examine the distributional impact of major dams on cropland productivity in Africa. As our unit of analysis we use a scientifically based spatial breakdown of the continent that allows one to exactly define regions in terms of their upstream/downstream relationship at a highly disaggregated level. We then use satellite data to derive measures of cropland productivity within these areas. Our econometric analysis shows that while regions downstream benefit from large dams, cropland within the vicinity tends to suffer productivity losses during droughts. Overall our results suggest that because of rainfall shortages dams in Africa caused a net loss of 0.96 per cent in productivity over our sample period (1981-2000). However, further dam construction in appropriate areas could potentially lead to large increases in productivity even if rainfall is not plenty.

Keywords: dams; agricultural productivity; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06-07
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00392381v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00392381v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00392381

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().