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Title: Why Is African Urbanization Different? Evidence from Resource Exports in Ghana and Ivory Coast
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2011
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Abstract: Africa has recently experienced dramatic urban growth. I argue that stan- dard theories of structural transformation cannot account for this result, as it was not driven by a green revolution or an industrial revolution but by natural resource exports. I develop a new structural transformation model in which the Engel curve implies that resource windfalls are disproportionately spent on urban goods and services. This drives urbanization through the rise of “consumption cities”. I then show that cocoa booms have led to in- creased urbanization in Ghana and Ivory Coast using decadal district panel data covering more than one hundred years. As an identification strategy, I use the fact that the location of cocoa production has shifted over time for exogenous reasons: (i) for agronomic reasons, farmers deforest a new area every 25 years, and (ii) for historical reasons, the cocoa frontier has started in the South-East and shifted westward in each country. I find that cities boom in newly producing districts and persist in old ones. I document how these cities arise as a result of rural-urban consumption linkages. I discuss how this type of agglomeration can then impact economic growth.
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Authors: Jedwab, Remi
Publisher: PSE and LSE
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization
Countries: United States