Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/179125 
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Title: 

Subnational border reforms and economic development in Africa

The document was removed on behalf of the author(s)/ the editor(s).

Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 18-027
Publisher: 
Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW), Mannheim
Abstract: 
A recent literature suggests that arbitrarily designed administrative borders are an important reason why sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the least developed regions on the globe. Accordingly, administrative border reforms may be a way to promote growth on the African continent. In this paper, we study the effect of subnational administrative border reforms on local economic development (proxied by nighttime luminosity) by tracking state-level border changes in Africa during 1992-2013 with GIS techniques. Difference-in-difference regressions suggest that mergers have strong positive effects on economic development. Splits, too, have positive effects, but they are substantially smaller on average. To understand why the economic impact of splits and mergers differs in magnitude, we investigate transmission channels. We link border changes to geocoded conflict data and survey evidence on political attitudes as well as service delivery. We find that the differences between splits and mergers are possibly due to different underlying motives for these two types of border reforms. Splits seem to affect development through higher political stability, i.e. a lower incidence of conflicts and more benign political attitudes of citizens, while mergers presumably work through an improvement in administrative efficiency.
Subjects: 
administrative border reforms
economic development
night-light data
Africa
JEL: 
D73
H77
R11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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The document was removed on behalf of the author(s)/ the editor(s) on: May 10, 2019


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