A global map of Amenities: Public Goods, Ethnic Divisions and Decentralization

André Seidel

VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: I analyze the effects of ethnic divisions on the provision of public goods. Using OpenStreetMap data, I construct a new global dataset of locations of public amenities, such as schools, hospital and libraries. I allow for the possibility that the data may be systematically incomplete using two new proxies for mapping completeness. I provide strong evidence that more autonomous subnational regions with a high degree of ethnic fractionalization provide significantly fewer productive public goods. Therefore, my findings indicate that decentralization can lead to a failure in the provision of local public goods when it increases ethnical fractionalization among the policy makers responsible for collectively supplying public goods.

Keywords: public goods; amenities; decentralization; ethnic fractionalization; OpenStreetMap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C82 D72 H41 H75 H77 R53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/224555/1/vfs-2020-pid-39379.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A global map of amenities: Public goods, ethnic divisions and decentralization (2023)
Working Paper: A global map of amenities: Public goods, ethnic divisions and decentralization (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:zbw:vfsc20:224555

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().