Ethnic Favoritism: Micro Evidence from Guinea

Is the ethnic group in power really better o¤ than others? This paper exploits random change in the ethnicity of the president of Guinea in 1984 to identify the e¤ect of having a co-ethnic in power on welfare, measured by infant mortality. Mother …xed e¤ects estimation results show that babies born to mothers living in districts where the new president’s ethnic group predominates are no less likely to die within the …rst year of life than in other districts after 1984, suggesting that the new president does not seem to favor districts where his ethnic group mostly inhabits. Mothers of the new president’s ethnicity do not see their babies less likely to die than those of other ethnicity in the same district after 1984, either, implying that the new president does not appear to favor members of his own ethnic group against other ethnic groups in the same area. Although these results are not entirely conclusive due to data limitations, this paper demonstrates an empirical methodology to identify ethnic favoritism by the government and casts some doubt on conventional wisdom that policy-makers favor their own ethnic group. JEL codes: O55, P16, Z13. Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University (from September 2007). Email: [email protected]. I thank Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak, Andrea Prat, and other participants at LSE EOPP Work-in-progress Seminar for many helpful comments.