Abstract

Despite widespread interest in government quality and economic development, the role of sub-national government has been largely overlooked. This represents an omission in Africa, given ongoing processes of devolution in much of the continent. In this article, we consider the impact of sub-national government institutions on economic development in 339 regions across 22 African countries. We create a novel index of sub-national government quality based on large-scale survey data and assess its impact on regional economies using satellite data on night light luminosity. To address causality concerns, we instrument sub-national government quality with data from pre-colonial societies. Our results show a positive and significant relationship between sub-national government quality and regional economic development, even when controlling for the quality of national-level institutions. Better sub-national governments are a powerful but often overlooked determinant of development in Africa.

摘要

尽管人们对政府质量和经济发展产生了广泛兴趣，但是地方政府的作用在很大程度上被忽略了。鉴于非洲大陆大部分地区的权力下放进程，这代表着非洲的遗漏。在本文中，我们考虑了22个非洲国家中339个地区的地方政府机构对经济发展的影响。我们根据大规模调查数据创建了一个新的地方政府质量指标，并使用夜光亮度的卫星数据评估了其对区域经济的影响。为了解决因果关系问题，我们使用来自前殖民社会的数据来衡量地方政府的质量。我们的结果表明，地方政府的素质与区域经济发展之间存在着积极而显着的关系，即使在控制国家级机构的质量时也是如此。更好的地方政府是非洲发展的强大但经常被忽视的决定因素。