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Previous work on transportation investments has focused on average impacts in high- and middle-income countries. We estimate average and heterogeneous effects in a poor continent, Africa, using roads and cities data spanning 50 years in 39 countries. Using changes in market access due to distant road construction as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate a 30-year elasticity of city population ... read morewith respect to market access of about 0.08-0.13. Our results suggest that this elasticity is stronger for small and remote cities, and weaker in politically favored and agriculturally suitable areas. Access to foreign cities besides international ports matters little. Additional evidence points suggestively to rural-urban migration as the primary source of this population increase, though we cannot fully rule out natural increase or reallocation across cities.
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of the European Economic Association following peer review. The version of record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvab027.read less
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