Isolated and Poor: the cost of remoteness from the capital city

Sandro Provenzano

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper investigates whether areas isolated from the capital city are less de- veloped economically in Sub-Saharan Africa. We apply a boundary-discontinuity design using national borders that divide pre-colonial ethnic homelands to obtain quasi-experimental variation in distance to the national capital city. Based on night- lights and geocoded surveys, we find that a one percent increase in distance to the capital city causes a decrease in the probability of detecting nightlights by 3 percent- age points and a reduction in household wealth corresponding to 3.5 percentiles of the national wealth distribution. Our results suggest that a lower provision of public goods in isolated areas is a key link between remoteness and economic performance. Despite receiving worse services, people who are isolated exhibit a higher level of trust in their political leaders. We interpret this as pointing towards dysfunctional accountability mechanisms that reduce the incentives of state executives to invest into isolated areas.

Keywords: boundary discontinuity; capital city; economic growth; nightlights; public goods; spatial inequality; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H41 O10 O40 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 115 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105688/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ehl:lserod:105688

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().