Port Rail Connectivity and Agricultural Production : Evidence from a Large Sample of Farmers in Ethiopia
Agriculture remains an important economic sector in Africa, employing a large share of the labor force and earning foreign exchange. Among others, transport connectivity has long been a crucial constraint in Africa. In theory, railways have a parti...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/415391496764154835/Port-rail-connectivity-and-agricultural-production-evidence-from-a-large-sample-of-farmers-in-Ethiopia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27288 |
| Summary: | Agriculture remains an important
economic sector in Africa, employing a large share of the
labor force and earning foreign exchange. Among others,
transport connectivity has long been a crucial constraint in
Africa. In theory, railways have a particularly important
role to play in shipping freight and passengers at low cost.
However, most African railways were in virtual bankruptcy by
the 1990s. Using a large sample of data comprised of more
than 190,000 households over eight years in Ethiopia, the
paper estimates the impacts of rail transport on
agricultural production. Methodologically, the paper takes
advantage of the historical event that a major rail line
connecting the country to the regional hub, the Port of
Djibouti, was abandoned in the 2000s. With spatially highly
disaggregated fixed effects and instrumental variables
incorporated, an agricultural production function is
estimated. The elasticity with respect to port connectivity
is estimated at 0.276. The use of fertilizer is also found
to increase with transport cost reduction, supporting the
fact that a large amount of fertilizer is imported to Ethiopia. |
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