Public infrastructure provision and ethnic favouritism : evidence from South Africa

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Authors

Walters, Leone
Bittencourt, Manoel
Chisadza, Carolyn

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Wiley

Abstract

Does coethnicity with the President affect public infrastructure provision in South Africa? Using municipal-level data for 52 district municipalities from 1996 to 2016, we find that municipalities coethnic with the President are associated with higher water infrastructure provision relative to non-coethnic municipalities. Taking into account various political considerations, results show that ethnic favouritism occurs due to ethnic altruism. Our findings remain robust to different specifications of coethnicity thresholds and are applicable to electricity infrastructure provision. Results suggest that in order to minimise ethnic favouritism, politically independent institutions should oversee the allocation of funding and provision of infrastructure.

Description

A previous version of this paper is an ERSA Working Paper, No. 787.

Keywords

Ethnic favouritism, Public infrastructure, South Africa (SA), SDG-17: Partnerships for the goals

Sustainable Development Goals

Citation

Walters, L., Bittencourt, M., & Chisadza, C. (2023). Public infrastructure provision and ethnic favouritism: Evidence from South Africa. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 31(1), 33–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12325.