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Do rent-seeking and interregional transfers contribute to urban primacy in Sub-Saharan Africa?

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  • Kristian Behrens
  • Alain Pholo Bala

Abstract

We develop an economic geography model in which mobile skilled workers choose between working in the production sector or becoming part of an unproductive political elite. The elite sets tax rates on skilled and unskilled workers to maximize its own welfare by extracting rents, thereby influencing the spatial allocation of production and changing the available range of consumption goods. We show that such behavior increases the likelihood of agglomeration and of urban primacy. In equilibrium, the elite may tax the unskilled workers but will never tax the skilled workers, and there are rural-urban transfers towards the agglomeration. The size of the elite and the magnitude of the tax burden that falls on the unskilled is shown to decrease with product differentiation and, via the tax rates, with the expenditure share for manufacturing goods.
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  • Kristian Behrens & Alain Pholo Bala, 2013. "Do rent-seeking and interregional transfers contribute to urban primacy in Sub-Saharan Africa?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(1), pages 163-195, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:presci:v:92:y:2013:i:1:p:163-195
    DOI: 10.1111/pirs.2013.92.issue-1
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    3. Frick, Susanne A. & Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés, 2018. "Change in urban concentration and economic growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 156-170.
    4. Luc Christiaensen & Joachim Weerdt & Yasuyuki Todo, 2013. "Urbanization and poverty reduction: the role of rural diversification and secondary towns," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(4-5), pages 435-447, July.
    5. Jacques†François Thisse, 2018. "Human Capital and Agglomeration Economies in Urban Development," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 56(2), pages 117-139, June.
    6. Christiaensen, Luc & Todo, Yasuyuki, 2014. "Poverty Reduction During the Rural–Urban Transformation – The Role of the Missing Middle," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 43-58.
    7. Decai Tang & Zhijiang Li & Brandon J. Bethel, 2019. "Relevance Analysis of Sustainable Development of China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt Based on Spatial Structure," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-16, August.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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