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Connective Financing: Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries
Richard Bluhm, Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Bradley Parks, Austin M. Strange, and Michael J. Tierney

Accepted for publication at Journal of Urban Economics




Abstract
This paper studies the causal effect of transport infrastructure on the spatial distribution of economic activity within subnational regions across a large number of developing countries. To do so, we introduce a new global dataset of geolocated Chinese grant- and loan-financed development projects from 2000 to 2014 and combine it with measures of spatial concentration based on remotely sensed data. We find that Chinese-financed transportation projects decentralize economic activity within regions, as measured by a spatial Gini coefficient, by 2.2 percentage points. The treatment effects are particularly strong in regions that are less developed, more urbanized, and located closer to cities.

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Working paper (May/June 2020)
Working paper (September 2018)
Presentations at conferences and workshops
  • Departmental Talk of the Departmenr of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (02/2020)
  • ESM Research Internal Seminar, European Stability Mechanism, Luxembourg (11/2019)
  • Research Seminar, University College Dublin, Ireland (11/2019)
  • Annual Meeting of the International Political Economy Society, University of California, San Diego, USA (11/2019)
  • Annual Economic Research Southern Africa Workshop on "Structural Constraints on the Economy, Growth and Political Economy", University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (09/2019)
  • Biennial Conference of the Economic Society of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa (09/2019)
  • China Economics Summer Institute, Peking University, Beijing, China (08/2019)
  • Next Generation Economics (NGE) Seminar, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany (07/2019)
  • Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, World Bank, Washington DC, USA (06/2019)
  • Annual Conference of the Verein für Socialpolitik Research Committee Development Economics, DIW, Berlin, Germany (06/2019)
  • European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands (06/2019)
  • GeoData in Economics Workshop, University of Hamburg, Germany (05/2019)
  • Economics Research Seminar, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy (05/2019)
  • Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland (04/2019)
  • TEDE Workshop "Topics in Development and Environmental Research", University of Birmingham, UK (02/2019)
  • Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (04/2019)
  • GEM Seminar, University of Groningen, Netherland (01/2019)
  • 1st HSU-IfW-Workshop in Development and Environmental Economics, HSU Hamburg, Germany (11/2018)
  • Research Seminar, New York University, New York City, USA (09/2018)

See also
[Thanks to Richard Bluhm for the photo!]