The development push of refugees: evidence from Tanzania

Jean-François Maystadt and Gilles Duranton

Journal of Economic Geography, 2019, vol. 19, issue 2, 299-334

Abstract: We exploit a 1991–2010 Tanzanian household panel to assess the effects of the temporary refugee inflows originating from Burundi (1993) and Rwanda (1994). We find that the refugee presence has had a persistent and positive impact on the welfare of the local population. We investigate the possible channels of transmission, underscoring the importance of a decrease in transport costs as a key driver of this persistent change in welfare. We interpret these findings as the ability of a temporary shock to induce a persistent shift in the equilibrium through subsequent investments rather than a switch to a new equilibrium in a multiple-equilibrium setting.

Keywords: Refugees; Tanzania; multiple equilibrium; roads (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O18 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lby020 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The development push of refugees: Evidence from Tanzania (2014)
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:oup:jecgeo:v:19:y:2019:i:2:p:299-334.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge

More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().