Where Do the Roads Go? Evaluating Corruption and the Distribution of Resources in China (2016)
Undergraduate: Zhiyi Su
Faculty Advisor: Simon Alder
Department: Economics
Where do government officials allocate infrastructure resources when there are margins for personal discretion? In a panel data of 286 Chinese cities with observations from 1993 to 2009, I examine the relationship between government officials and the area of roads built in each city. I find that the area of paved roads in cities that are also the birthplaces of high-level officials increases as the number of high-level officials and the number of years during which they stay in office increase. This phenomenon appears right after China decentralized its fiscal process in 2004 and it provides convincing evidence for the presence of corruption in Chinese public resource allocation process. This study contributes as one of the first works in economics literature that examines distributive politics in an autocratic state.