Abstract
Purpose - This paper seeks to measure the quality of infrastructure investments in rural China as well as to document the differences among projects and among villages in order to try to understand why the quality of infrastructure investments differs across space.Design/methodology/approach - Using primary data on three main types of infrastructure projects in rural China, we analyze the sources of the differences in the quality of projects by examining whether the differences are due to project-specific characteristics or village-specific characteristics.Findings - we find that a.) between-project within-village quality differences are small and project design has little explanatory power; b.) between-village variations are larger; and c.) there are strong correlations between the ways villages govern themselves and project quality. We conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in bad communities and that there is something at the village level that is making some projects succeed in some villages, but not in others.Originality/value - The results of our study suggest that shifts in policies that promote elections, while slow in getting started and not universal, appear to be creating an atmosphere that is conducive for infrastructure quality.
Purpose - This paper seeks to measure the quality of infrastructure investments in rural China as well as to document the differences among projects and among villages in order to try to understand why the quality of infrastructure investments differs across space.Design/methodology/approach - Using primary data on three main types of infrastructure projects in rural China, we analyze the sources of the differences in the quality of projects by examining whether the differences are due to project-specific characteristics or village-specific characteristics.Findings - we find that a.) between-project within-village quality differences are small and project design has little explanatory power; b.) between-village variations are larger; and c.) there are strong correlations between the ways villages govern themselves and project quality. We conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in bad communities and that there is something at the village level that is making some projects succeed in some villages, but not in others.Originality/value - The results of our study suggest that shifts in policies that promote elections, while slow in getting started and not universal, appear to be creating an atmosphere that is conducive for infrastructure quality.