Highway Politics in a Divided Government: Evidence from Mexico

Harris Selod () and Souleymane Soumahoro

No 8710, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper combines local election results and geo-referenced road construction data over 1993-2012 to investigate political bias in road infrastructure investment in a democratic setting, focusing on the case of Mexico. Using a regression discontinuity design, the paper finds strong evidence of partisan allocation of federally-funded highways to municipalities that voted for the president's party in legislative races, nearly doubling the stock of highways compared to opposition municipalities. The extent of political favoritism in highway provision is stronger under divided government when the president has no majority in the legislature, suggesting political efforts to control the Congress.

Keywords: Roads and Highways Performance; Roads&Highways; Inter-Urban Roads and Passenger Transport; Transport Services; Flood Control; Tertiary Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8710

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