Political cycles of infrastructure investment: How career concerns shape strategic behavior of city leaders?

Drawing on multi-task principal–agent theories, we aim in this paper to explore a hitherto understudied politics–infrastructure nexus using a data set of Chinese municipal leader profiles. Analysing a panel dataset of 2,399 political leaders’ profiles and infrastructure-investment change across 283 Chinese cities from 2002 to 2016, we demonstrate that city leaders adopt an inverted U-shaped curve regarding infrastructure-investment growth over their tenures. The investment fluctuation strengthens in municipalities with a relatively lower degree of institutional development and in municipalities which have fewer political resources. Furthermore, a higher frequency of political turnover leads to a higher average growth rate of infrastructure investment. This study suggests that fluctuation in infrastructure investment in China is aligned with political incentives, offering new opportunities for comparative studies of global relevance.