When and how do governments deliver public goods and services in response to citizen
preferences? We review the current literature on government responsiveness, with a focus …

Background How do governance interventions that engage citizens in public service
delivery planning, management and oversight impact the quality of and access to services …

We posit that autocrats introduce local elections when their bureaucratic capacity is low.
Local elections exploit citizens' informational advantage in keeping local officials …

We present results from a large-scale experimental evaluation of an ambitious attempt to
improve management quality in Indian schools (implemented in 1,774 randomly-selected …

This paper reports on a two-tiered experiment designed to separately identify the selection
and effort margins of pay for performance (P4P). At the recruitment stage, teacher labor …

Improving “last-mile” public service delivery is a recurring challenge in developing countries.
Could the widespread adoption of mobile phones provide a scalable, cost-effective means …

A central question in development economics is whether there are adequate checks and
balances on the executive. This paper provides causal evidence of how increasing …

Firms, workers, and consumers in developing countries are increasingly connected to each
other and the rest of the world through the internet. Can this connectivity transform poor …

More than two billion people globally live in smallholder farming households, comprising a
large proportion of the world's poor. Smallholder farm yields are estimated to reach only 25 …

Corrupt government hiring is common in developing countries. This paper uses original data
to document the operation and consequences of corrupt hiring in a health bureaucracy …