Showing papers by "Rema Hanna published in 2013"

Environmental Regulations, Air and Water Pollution, and Infant Mortality in India

Abstract: Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India’s environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements in air quality. The most successful air regulation resulted in a modest, but statistically insignificant decline in infant mortality. In contrast, the water regulations had no measurable benefits. The available evidence leads us to cautiously conclude that higher demand for air quality prompted the effective enforcement of air pollution regulations, indicating that strong public support allows environmental regulations to succeed in weak institutional settings.

Does Elite Capture Matter? Local Elites and Targeted Welfare Programs in Indonesia

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of elite capture on the allocation of targeted government welfare programs in Indonesia, using both a high-stakes field experiment that varied the extent of elite influence and non-experimental data on a variety of existing government transfer programs. Conditional on their consumption level, there is little evidence that village elites and their relatives are more likely to receive aid programs than non-elites. Looking more closely, however, we find that this overall result masks a difference between different types of elites: those holding formal leadership positions are more likely to receive benefits, while informal leaders are actually less likely to. We show that capture by formal elites occurs during the distribution of benefits under the programs, and not during the processes when the beneficiary lists are determined by the central government. However, while elite capture exists, the welfare losses it creates appear quite small: since formal elites and their relatives are only 9 percent richer than non-elites, are at most about 8 percentage points more likely to receive benefits than non-elites, and represent at most 15 percent of the population, eliminating elite capture entirely would improve the welfare gains from these programs by less than one percent.

Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, we also show that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying that this measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Students who demonstrate lower levels of prosocial preferences in the laboratory games are also more likely to prefer to enter the government, while outcomes on explicit, two-player games to measure cheating and attitudinal measures of corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. We find that a screening process that chooses the highest ability applicants would not alter the average propensity for corruption among the applicant pool. Our findings imply that differential selection into government may contribute, in part, to corruption. They also emphasize that screening characteristics other than ability may be useful in reducing corruption, but caution that more explicit measures may offer little predictive power.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Ordeal mechanisms in targeting: theory and evidence from a field experiment in indonesia

Abstract: 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 ambiguous effects on targeting: for example, time spent applying imposes a higher monetary cost on the rich, but may impose a higher utility cost on the poor. We then examine these issues empirically by conducting a 400-village field experiment within Indonesia's Conditional Cash Transfer program. Targeting in the program is usually conducted by automatically enrolling candidates who pass an asset test. We compare whether instituting an ordeal mechanism, where villagers come to a central application site to apply and take the asset test, improves targeting over the existing automatic enrollment system. Within self-targeting villages, we find that the poor are more likely to apply, even conditional on whether they would pass the asset test. On net, self-targeting villages have a much poorer group of beneficiaries than status quo villages. However, marginally increasing the ordeal does not necessarily improve targeting: while experimentally increasing the distance to the application site reduces the number of applicants, it screens out both rich and poor in roughly equal proportions. Estimating the model structurally, we show that only one would need to increase the ordeal dramatically (e.g. tripling wait times to 9 hours or more) to induce detectable additional selection. In short, ordeal mechanisms can induce self-selection, but marginally increasing the ordeal can impose additional costs on applicants without necessarily improving targeting.

Does Elite Capture Matter? Local Elites and Targeted Welfare Programs in Indonesia

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of elite capture on the allocation of targeted government welfare programs in Indonesia, using both a high-stakes field experiment that varied the extent of elite influence and non-experimental data on a variety of existing government transfer programs. Conditional on their consumption level, there is little evidence that village elites and their relatives are more likely to receive aid programs than non-elites. Looking more closely, however, we find that this overall result masks a difference between different types of elites: those holding formal leadership positions are more likely to receive benefits, while informal leaders are actually less likely to. We show that capture by formal elites occurs during the distribution of benefits under the programs, and not during the processes when the beneficiary lists are determined by the central government. However, while elite capture exists, the welfare losses it creates appear quite small: since formal elites and their relatives are only 9 percent richer than non-elites, are at most about 8 percentage points more likely to receive benefits than non-elites, and represent at most 15 percent of the population, eliminating elite capture entirely would improve the welfare gains from these programs by less than one percent.

Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, we also show that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying that this measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Students who demonstrate lower levels of prosocial preferences in the laboratory games are also more likely to prefer to enter the government, while outcomes on explicit, two-player games to measure cheating and attitudinal measures of corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. We find that a screening process that chooses the highest ability applicants would not alter the average propensity for corruption among the applicant pool. Our findings imply that differential selection into government may contribute, in part, to corruption. They also emphasize that screening characteristics other than ability may be useful in reducing corruption, but caution that more explicit measures may offer little predictive power.

Ordeal Mechanisms In Targeting: Theory And Evidence From A Field Experiment In Indonesia

Abstract: 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 ambiguous effects on targeting: for example, time spent applying imposes a higher monetary cost on the rich, but may impose a higher utility cost on the poor. We then examine these issues empirically by conducting a 400-village field experiment within Indonesia's Conditional Cash Transfer program. Targeting in the program is usually conducted by automatically enrolling candidates who pass an asset test. We compare whether instituting an ordeal mechanism, where villagers come to a central application site to apply and take the asset test, improves targeting over the existing automatic enrollment system. Within self-targeting villages, we find that the poor are more likely to apply, even conditional on whether they would pass the asset test. On net, self-targeting villages have a much poorer group of beneficiaries than status quo villages. However, marginally increasing the ordeal does not necessarily improve targeting: while experimentally increasing the distance to the application site reduces the number of applicants, it screens out both rich and poor in roughly equal proportions. Estimating the model structurally, we show that only one would need to increase the ordeal dramatically (e.g. tripling wait times to 9 hours or more) to induce detectable additional selection. In short, ordeal mechanisms can induce self-selection, but marginally increasing the ordeal can impose additional costs on applicants without necessarily improving targeting.