German Development Economics Conference 2024

Session

Parallel Session 1

24 May 2024, 17:00

F142 (Welfenschloss)

172. Wedded to Prosperity? Informal Influence and Regional Favoritism

Lennart Kaplan (GAU)

24/05/2024, 17:00

Political Economy

Parallel Session

We investigate the informal influence of political leaders' spouses on the subnational allocation of foreign aid. Building new worldwide datasets on personal characteristics of political leaders and their spouses as well as on geocoded development aid projects (including new data on 19 Western donors), we examine whether those regions within recipient countries that include the birthplace of...

97. Political Favoritism and internal migration in Benin

Alexander Stöcker (German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS))

24/05/2024, 17:30

Political Economy

Parallel Session

In this paper we explore the role of regional connections with a national leader as a pull factor of internal migration in Benin by exploiting granular census data over the period 1991-2013. The empirical analysis is based on a gravity model of migration and utilizes a PPML estimator. Controlling for a diverse set of fixed effects, we show that being connected to a national leader goes along...