Public infrastructure provision and ethnic favouritism: Evidence from South Africa

Leoné Walters, Manoel Bittencourt () and Carolyn Chisadza

Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 2023, vol. 31, issue 1, 33-65

Abstract: Does coethnicity with the President affect public infrastructure provision in South Africa? Using municipal‐level data for 52 district municipalities from 1996 to 2016, we find that municipalities coethnic with the President are associated with higher water infrastructure provision relative to non‐coethnic municipalities. Taking into account various political considerations, results show that ethnic favouritism occurs due to ethnic altruism. Our findings remain robust to different specifications of coethnicity thresholds and are applicable to electricity infrastructure provision. Results suggest that in order to minimise ethnic favouritism, politically independent institutions should oversee the allocation of funding and provision of infrastructure.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12325

Related works:
Working Paper: Public Infrastructure Provision and Ethnic Favouritism: Evidence from South Africa (2019)
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:wly:ectrin:v:31:y:2023:i:1:p:33-65

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics of Transition and Institutional Change from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().