Who's Turn to Eat? The Political Economy of Roads in Kenya

Abstract

By reducing trade costs and promoting economic specialization across regions, transportation infrastructure is a determining factor of growth. Yet, developing countries are characterized by infrastructure underdevelopment, the general lack of funding being often mentioned as the main reason for it. Then, even when such investments are realized, the welfare gains associated to them might be captured by political elites that are strong enough to influence their allocation across space. We study this issue by investigating the political economy of road placement in Kenya, an African country where politicians are said to favour individuals from their region of origin or who share their ethnicity. Combining district-level panel data on road building with historical data on the ethnicity and district of birth of political leaders, we show that presidents disproportionately invest in their district of birth and those regions where their ethnicity is dominant. It also seems that the second most powerful ethnic group in the cabinet and the district of birth of the public works minister receive more paved roads. In the end, a large share of road investments over the period can be explained by political appointments, which denotes massive and well-entrenched ethno-favoritism in Kenyan politics. JEL classification codes: H41, H54, O12, O55, P16 ∗Robin Burgess, Department of Economics and STICERD, London School of Economics (e-mail: [e-mail]). Remi Jedwab, Paris School of Economics and STICERD, London School of Economics (e-mail: [e-mail]). Edward Miguel, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley and NBER (email: [e-mail]). Ameet Morjaria, Department of Economics and STICERD, London School of Economics (e-mail: [e-mail]). Acknowledgements: We are extremely grateful to seminar participants at LSE and PSE for their helpful comments. Rashmi Harimohan, Jaya Kanoria, Anne Mbugua and Priya Mukherjee provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Michelin (Paris) for the permission to use their historical maps and to Marie Pailloncy-Ruat and Michele Gladieux for their assistance. We thank Francis Herbert for his assistance and patience at the Royal Geographic Society (London). Lastly, we are grateful to the DFID Program on Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth for funding the data collection.