Karthik Muralidharan

Bio: Karthik Muralidharan is an academic researcher from University of California, San Diego. The author has contributed to research in topics: Incentive & Public sector. The author has an hindex of 33, co-authored 77 publications receiving 5009 citations. Previous affiliations of Karthik Muralidharan include Harvard University & National Bureau of Economic Research.

Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries

Abstract: In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators make unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities.

Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India

Abstract: This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Teacher performance pay : experimental evidence from India, conducted in August 2005 in India. The study observed the impact of a teacher performance pay program implemented across a large representative sample of government-run rural primary schools in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on the student and school level. After two years, students in incentive schools performed significantly better than control schools. The mean treatment effect is 0.22 standard deviations. There are significant improvements across the performance distribution. Additionally there were no observations of adverse consequences, given that students also do better in non-incentivized subjects. The main mechanism of impact is increased teacher effort conditional on the teacher being present. The student's gender does not have a significant effect on the impact of the intervention. Funding for the study derived from the Andhra Pradesh, Department for International Development (DFID), Azim Premji Foundation, and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund.

Teacher absence in india: a snapshot

Abstract: Twenty-five percent of teachers were absent from school, and only about half were teaching, during unannounced visits to a nationally representative sample of government primary schools in India. Absence rates varied from 15% in Maharashtra to 42% in Jharkhand, with higher rates concentrated in the poorer states. We do not find that higher pay is associated with lower absence. Older teachers, more educated teachers, and head teachers are all paid more but are also more frequently absent; contract teachers are paid much less than regular teachers but have similar absence rates; and although relative teacher salaries are higher in poorer states, absence rates are also higher. Teacher absence is more correlated with daily incentives to attend work: teachers are less likely to be absent at schools that have been inspected recently, that have better infrastructure, and that are closer to a paved road. We find little evidence that attempting to strengthen local community ties will reduce absence. Teachers from the local area have similar absence rates as teachers from outside the community. Locally controlled nonformal schools have slightly higher absence rates than schools run by the state government. The existence of a PTA is not correlated with lower absence. Private-school teachers are only slightly less likely to be absent than public-school teachers in general, but are 8 percentage points less likely to be absent than public-school teachers in the same village. (JEL: O15, I21, H41, H52)

Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India

Abstract: Anti-poverty programs in developing countries are often dicult to implement; in particular, many governments lack the capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneciaries. We evaluate the impact of biometrically-authenticated payments infrastructure (\Smartcards") on beneciaries of employment (NREGS) and pension (SSP) programs in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using a large-scale experiment that randomized the rollout of Smartcards over 158 subdistricts and 19 million people. We nd that, while incompletely implemented, the new system delivered a faster, more predictable, and less corrupt NREGS payments process without adversely aecting program access. For each of these outcomes, treatment group distributions rst-order stochastically dominated those of the control group. The investment was cost-eective, as time savings to NREGS beneciaries alone were equal to the cost of the intervention, and there was also a signicant reduction in the \leakage" of funds between the government and beneciaries in both NREGS and SSP programs. Beneciaries overwhelmingly preferred the new system for both programs. Overall, our results suggest that investing in secure payments infrastructure can signicantly enhance \state capacity" to implement welfare programs in developing countries.

The Aggregate Effect of School Choice: Evidence from a Two-Stage Experiment in India

Abstract: We present experimental evidence on the impact of a school choice program in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh that provided students with a voucher to finance attending a private school of their choice. The study design featured a unique two-stage lottery-based allocation of vouchers that created both student-level and market-level experiments, which allows us to study the individual and the aggregate effects of school choice (including spillovers). After two and four years of the program, we find no difference between test scores of lottery winners and losers on Telugu (native language), math, English, and science/social studies, suggesting that the large cross-sectional differences in test scores across public and private schools mostly reflect omitted variables. However, private schools also teach Hindi, which is not taught by the public schools, and lottery winners have much higher test scores in Hindi. Furthermore, the mean cost per student in the private schools in our sample was less than a third of the cost in public schools. Thus, private schools in this setting deliver slightly better test score gains than their public counterparts (better on Hindi and same in other subjects), and do so at a substantially lower cost per student. Finally, we find no evidence of spillovers on public school students who do not apply for the voucher, or on private school students, suggesting that the positive effects on voucher winners did not come at the expense of other students. JEL Codes: C93, H44, H52, I21, O15.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence

Abstract: A common approach to evaluating robustness to omitted variable bias is to observe coefficient movements after inclusion of controls. This is informative only if selection on observables is informative about selection on unobservables. Although this link is known in theory in existing literature, very few empirical articles approach this formally. I develop an extension of the theory that connects bias explicitly to coefficient stability. I show that it is necessary to take into account coefficient and R-squared movements. I develop a formal bounding argument. I show two validation exercises and discuss application to the economics literature. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

The Economic Lives of the Poor

Abstract: This paper uses survey data from 13 countries to document the economic lives of the poor (those living on less than $2 dollar per day per capita at purchasing power parity) or the extremely poor (those living on less than $1 dollar per day). We describe their patterns of consumption and income generation as well as their access to markets and publicly provided infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of some apparent anomalous choices.

The Developing World is Poorer than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty

Abstract: A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world We find that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005, as judged by what “poverty” typically means in the world's poorest countries This is higher than past estimates Substantial overall progress is still indicated—the corresponding poverty rate was 52% in 1981—but progress was very uneven across regions The trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology, though precise counts are more sensitive