African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dreher, Axel; Fuchs, Andreas; Hodler, Roland; Parks, Bradley C.; Raschky, Paul A.; Tierney, Michael J.
• 署名单位: Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of Gottingen; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; Leibniz Association; Institut fur Weltwirtschaft an der Universitat Kiel (IFW); University of St Gallen; University of St Gallen; William & Mary; Monash University; William & Mary
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.04.003
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 44-71
• 关键词: foreign aid; favoritism; Political capture; patronage; clientelism; aid on demand; Aid allocation; AFRICA; CHINA; Official Development Assistance; Georeferenced data; Spatial analysis

摘要

We investigate whether foreign aid from China is prone to political capture in aid-receiving countries. Specifically, we examine whether more Chinese aid is allocated to the birth regions of political leaders, controlling for indicators of need and various fixed effects. We collect data on 117 African leaders' birthplaces and geocode 1650 Chinese development projects across 2969 physical locations in Africa from 2000 to 2012. Our econometric results show that political leaders' birth regions receive substantially larger financial flows from China in the years when they hold power compared to what the same region receives at other times. We find evidence that these biases are a consequence of electoral competition: Chinese aid disproportionately benefits politically privileged regions in country -years when incumbents face upcoming elections and when electoral competitiveness is high. We observe no such pattern of favoritism in the spatial distribution of World Bank development projects.