We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of ranking
officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions' impact on infrastructure in their …

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in using public-works programs as anti-
poverty measures in developing countries. This paper analyzes the rural labor market …

Public works programs in developing countries can reduce poverty in the long term and help
low-skilled workers cope with economic shocks in the short term. But success depends on a …

Does decentralisation promote clientelism? If yes, through which mechanisms? We answer
these questions through an analysis of India's (and the world's) largest workfare programme …

This paper attempts to measure the effect of castereservation policies on the provision of
public goods and services in gram panchayats in Andhra Pradesh using data from the …

Are ostensibly demand-driven public works programs with high levels of safeguards
nonetheless susceptible to political influence? We investigate this conjecture using …

While government spending on pro-poor community asset creation and income-transfers
could have compounding positive effects on poverty reduction, it is important to first study …

A number of developing country governments have introduced ambitious anti-poverty
programs in recent years, but the dynamic effects of these initiatives on governments' …

Summary Motivation The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(NREGA) provides 100 days of employment a year at the legal minimum wage to every rural …

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a
unique dataset of promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public …