International records / OpenAlex research

Capacity, Proximity and the Limitations of Infrastructure Services Decentralisation for Poverty Reduction

While in practice, infrastructure decentralisation is gaining ground in developing countries, it is not clear that it is supported by robust literature on its capacity to deliver superior growth and poverty reduction outcomes. Rather, a number of social goals seem to be behind the push for decentralisation. While these lofty goals should be encouraged, the trade-off with economic efficiency can be quite high, particularly when proximity considerations are not weighed vis-à-vis capacity challenges that face sub-national governments. By looking at the literature and showing some results from ben…