Shine a (Night)Light: Decentralization and Economic Development in Burkina Faso

Olivier B. Bargain (), Rose Vincent and Emilie Caldeira ()
Additional contact information
Olivier B. Bargain: University of Bordeaux
Emilie Caldeira: CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne

No 17459, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Decentralization, championed by international institutions, has been one of the most prominent public sector reforms of the last decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, few studies propose a quasi-experimental evaluation of its capacity to contribute to local development. We exploit the phase-in of decentralization at the commune level in Burkina Faso. We use satellite information on night-time light density as a proxy for local development levels, which has the advantage of being measured and comparable over time and space. The communes that were decentralized first can be compared to the others after the reform relative to the pre-reform situation. The difference-in-difference approach includes commune fixed effects and inverse propensity score reweighting to account for time-varying differences across communes. We find a positive impact of decentralization on the night-light intensity trends of the early-decentralized communes. This is supported by alternative measures (remote sensing of built-up settlements and a welfare index), which shows the possibly broader scope of decentralization gains. We show that decentralization did not lift all boats: only the communes with the ability to generate own-source revenues benefited from effective decentralization.

Keywords: local development; economic development; decentralization; Africa; Burkina Faso (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H00 H70 H71 H72 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-big, nep-dev, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: World Development, 2025, 187, 106851

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17459.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Shine a (night)light: Decentralization and economic development in Burkina Faso (2025)
Working Paper: Shine a (night)light: decentralization and economic development in Burkina Faso (2025)
Working Paper: Shine a (night)light: decentralization and economic development in Burkina Faso (2025)
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:iza:izadps:dp17459

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().