A great deal of attention has been paid in the literature to estimating the impacts of training programs. Much less attention has been devoted to how training agencies assign participants to training programs, and to how these allocation decisions vary with agency resources, the initial skill...

Information campaigns aimed at empowering the poor often fall short of meeting their desired aims. We study literacy's role in determining their efficacy. First, exploiting an RD design, we show that receipt of information increased household rice receipts by 30 percentage points. Second, we...

This study aimed to trace the chain of relationships between contextual factors and built capacities in order to understand the process of transformations that have impacted the Single Registry for Social Programs (Cadastro Único para Programas Sociais - Cadastro Único) since its creation in...

The global movement against corruption has long assumed its demise lay in transparency and accountability. We test this assumption by measuring whether highly accountable Indian village council presidents favor their own households while making observable allocations of public works jobs. We...

In 2013, the Government of Indonesia conducted one of the largest information interventions in histo-ry, in an attempt to further alleviate poverty and as a complement to the Social Protection Card (KPS). Drawing upon administrative data and nationally representative surveys, we evaluate the...

The word "scapegoat" is defined as "a person made to bear the blame for others," and similarly, "scapegoatism" refers to "the act or practice of assigning blame or failure to another, as to deflect attention or responsibility away from oneself" (Collins English Dictionary and Dictionary.com,...

Organized crime reinforces its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On...

Organised crime tightens its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On...

The implementation of social policies is often hampered by the fact that local decision-makers may be unwilling or unable to implement the policy as intended by the central government. In contrast to research that focuses on incentivizing and holding local decision makers accountable, we examine...

Concerns about fraud in welfare programs are common arguments worldwide against such programs. We conducted a survey experiment with over 28,000 welfare program administrators and over 19,000 beneficiaries in Indonesia to elicit the ‘marginal disutility from corruption,’ i.e., the...