There is general agreement that the existence of participatory institutions is a necessary condition for accountability, especially where top-down institutions are malfunctioning or missing. In education, the evidence on the effectiveness of participatory accountability is mixed. This paper...

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, especially in developing countries. The authors investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data obtained from...

Financial sector development is a critical area of effective social protection policy. A well-regulated financial sector can complement government efforts to keep households from falling into poverty - by supplying the instruments needed to pool risks, or to self-insure against losses because of...

Embezzlement of resources is hampering public service delivery throughout the developing world. Research on this issue is hindered by problems of measurement. To overcome these problems, the authors use an economic experiment to investigate the determinants of corrupt behavior. They focus on...

This paper uses a randomized controlled experiment in which farmers trained on a new rice cultivation method teach two other farmers. The results show that the intervention increases yields and farm profits among treated farmers. Teacher-trainees are effective at spreading knowledge and inducing...

Standard models of investment predict that credit-constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital, and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital. The authors randomly gave cash and in-kind grants to male-...

Despite the emphasis placed by microfinance organizations on lending to female business owners, evidence from three recent randomized controlled trials has cast doubt on the ability of capital alone to grow female-operated microenterprises: in my own previous experiment in Sri Lanka women given...

Patterns of correlation in innovation and contractual practices among manufacturing firms in Ethiopia and Sudan are documented. Network data that indicate whether any two firms in the utilized sample do business with each other, buy inputs from a common supplier, or sell output to a common...

Original Ugandan data collected by the authors are used to examine the determinants of funding to local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Success in attracting grants from international donors depends mostly on network effects. NGOs that raise in-kind resources locally tend to be young and...

This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML...