Developing country governments are increasingly implementing cash assistance programs to combat poverty and inequality. This paper examines the potential tradeoffs between targeting these transfers towards low income households versus providing universal cash transfers, also known as a Universal...

Developing country governments are increasingly implementing cash assistance programs to combat poverty and inequality. This paper examines the potential tradeoffs between targeting these transfers towards low income households versus providing universal cash transfers, also known as a Universal...

Economic theory suggests that, when designing aid programs, ordeal mechanisms that impose differential costs for rich and poor can induce self-selection and hence improve targeting ("self-targeting"). We first re-examine this theory and show that ordeal mechanisms may actually have theoretically...