Regional favouritism and economic development: evidence from cabinet minister origins and 72 municipalities in Zambia

The paper examines regional favouritism as proxied by cabinet minister origins and local economic development in 72 municipalities of Zambia using panel data aggregated from four household surveys (2002,2006,2010 & 2015 Living Conditions Monitoring Surveys). Using fixed effect models, I find no evidence of regional favouritism by cabinet ministers as proxied by differential household expenditure trends across 72 municipalities of Zambia. I further go beyond cabinet ministers as a proxy of political connections to the central government by also looking at ruling party alignment. Again, I find no evidence of regional favouritism by Ruling Party. I discuss limitations and my findings within the literature on distributive politics as well as the context of Zambia.