How should recipients of publicly-provided goods and services prove their identity in order to access these benefits? The core design challenge is managing the tradeoff between Type-II errors of inclusion (including corruption) against Type-I errors of exclusion whereby legitimate beneficiaries...

How should recipients of publicly-provided goods and services prove their identity in order to access these benefits? The core design challenge is managing the tradeoff between Type-II errors of inclusion (including corruption) against Type-I errors of exclusion whereby legitimate beneficiaries...

Recent debates about the optimal form of social protection programs have highlighted the potential for cash as the preferred form of transfer to low income households. However, in-kind transfers remain prevalent throughout the world. We argue that beneficiaries themselves may prefer in-kind...

In-kind transfers can provide insurance benefits when prices of consumption goods vary, as is common in developing countries. We develop a model demonstrating that in-kind transfers are welfare improving to beneficiaries relative to cash if the covariance between the marginal utility of income...

Despite significant economic growth, child development outcomes in India remain poor. Using a large-scale experiment in which randomly-selected mothers receive cash transfers for the first two years of their child's life, we examine the relationship between income and child development in the...