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Research report

Better roads, better off? : Evidence on improving roads in Tanzania

BP2-STS

    01.09.2020

67

Roads
Poverty
Rural households
Africa
English Spatial isolation is considered as one of the main determinants of poverty. Therefore, many transport investments are undertaken with a stated objective of poverty reduction. In our paper, we evaluate a Tanzanian program that rehabilitated 2500km of major roads between 2008 and 2013. We deal with endogenous placement issues with a household fixed-effect strategy combined with a propensity score matching. Contrary to most studies, we find damaging effects of the road on the rural population: the price of the main product (rice) decreases, they reduce rice production and reallocate labor away from farm but opportunities of o_-farm work are scarce. This results in depressed wages and households declare a lower satisfaction. This is consistent with a situation where rural households face an increased competition due to lower transportation costs.
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Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Other electronic version

Faculté SES

Series statement
  • Working Papers SES ; 518
License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 328959
  • RERO R009077231
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308795
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