The political economy of road construction:: evidence from restoration Spain

• Autores: Marta Curto Grau, Alfonso Herranz Loncán, Albert Solé Ollé
• Localización: XVII Encuentro de Economía Pública: políticas públicas ante la crisis, 2010, pág. 76
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper aims at analysing the extent to which public allocation of road investment was influenced by political and electoral goals during the Spanish Restoration (1874-1923). More precisely, our main purpose is to identify which sort of provinces were favoured with road construction and whether tactical strategies used by parties varied over time due to an increase in political competition. Thus, this paper links concepts from three strands of literature: legislative pork-barrel, clientelism and machine politics and electoral competition. Our key empirical finding on a panel of Spain�s provinces suggests that those provinces with a large share of minority parties were initially punished through lower levels of road investment while by the end of the period such resources were used to favour these provinces.