Infrastructure and Structural Change in the Horn of Africa
Access to infrastructure supports economic development through both capital accumulation and structural transformation. This paper investigates the links between investments in electricity, Internet, and road infrastructure, in isolation and bundle...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/243731638286142370/Infrastructure-and-Structural-Change-in-the-Horn-of-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36646 |
| Summary: | Access to infrastructure supports
economic development through both capital accumulation and
structural transformation. This paper investigates the links
between investments in electricity, Internet, and road
infrastructure, in isolation and bundled, and economic
development in the Horn of Africa, a region that includes
countries with different levels of infrastructure and
economic development. Using data on the expansion of the
road, electricity, and Internet networks over the past two
decades, it provides reduced-form estimates of the impacts
of infrastructure investments on the sectoral composition of
employment. Bundled infrastructure investments cause
different patterns of structural transformation than
isolated infrastructure investments. The impact of bundled
road and electricity investments on reducing the sectoral
employment share in agriculture is found to be 2.5 times
larger than the impact of roads alone. The paper then uses a
spatial general equilibrium model to quantify the impacts of
future regional transport investments, bundled with
electricity and trade facilitation measures, on economic
development in countries in the Horn of Africa. |
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