Priority Roads: the Political Economy of Africa's Interior-to-Coast Roads

Roberto Bonfatti, Yuan Gu and Steven Poelhekke

No 15354, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well placed to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in West Africa in 1965-2014. Controlling for geography and comparative advantage, we find that autocracies focused more than democracies on connecting metal and mineral deposits to ports, resulting in more interior-to-coast networks. This deposit-to-port bias was only present for deposits located on the elite's ethnic homeland, suggesting that Africa's interior-to-coast roads were the result of ethnic favoritism by autocracies.

Keywords: Political economy; Democracy; Infrastructure; Natural resources; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H54 O18 P16 P26 Q32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
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Related works:
Working Paper: Priority Roads: The Political Economy of Africa's Interior-to-Coast Roads (2019)
Working Paper: Priority roads: The political economy of Africa's interior-to-coast roads (2019)
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