The long-term impact of Italian colonial roads in the Horn of Africa, 1935-2015

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Mattia C. Bertazzini, University of Oxford

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
DHS_main.dta application/x-stata-dta 3 MB 04/22/2021 03:06:AM
GRID_30km.dta application/x-stata-dta 301.1 KB 10/22/2020 01:19:AM
GRID_main.dta application/x-stata-dta 7.9 MB 08/07/2020 08:45:AM
do_appendix.do text/plain 25.7 KB 08/07/2020 10:21:AM
do_main.do text/plain 23.9 KB 10/22/2020 01:51:AM
read_me_replication.pdf application/pdf 61.5 KB 10/22/2020 01:17:AM

Project Citation: 

Bertazzini, Mattia C. The long-term impact of Italian colonial roads in the Horn of Africa, 1935-2015. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-04-22. https://doi.org/10.3886/E120562V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary
This article exploits the quasi-natural experiment provided by the extensive road network
that was built across the Horn of Africa during the Italian occupation of
Ethiopia (1936–1941), to examine how a first-mover advantage in transportation can
affect the spatial distribution of economic activity in developing countries over the
long run. The results show that Italian paved roads rendered areas located within
10 km of them significantly more populated, urbanized and luminous around 2010,
relative to comparable, more distant locations. Early roadbuilding lifted first-mover
locations out of isolation and allowed for net welfare gains, thanks to a reduction in
transport costs and specialization. To this day, first-mover locations continue to diverge
from the control group, due to a coordination mechanism that led to an oversupply
of governmental facilities in the post-colonial period.



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V1 [2021-04-22]

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