This paper investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random...

This paper investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random...

This paper argues that welfare programs are linked with the destruction of social capital, as measured by interpersonal trust in laboratory games. The paper employs experimental data for representative samples of individuals in four Latin American capital cities (Bogota, Lima, Montevideo, and...

This paper explores the extent to which individuals trust, reciprocate, cooperate and pool risk by using a battery of field experiments containing the trust game, the voluntary contributions mechanism and the risk pooling game; applied in six capital cities in Latin America. The results suggest...

This paper takes advantage of a quasi-natural experiment in Peru by which the privatized telecommunications company was required by government to randomly install and operate public pay phones in small rural towns throughout the national territory. Using a specially designed household survey for...

This paper investigates the potential of information technologies to improve public service delivery and empower citizens in the context of two unusual randomized natural experiments occurring within one particular bureaucratic process: the renewal of a national identification card by the...

This paper investigates the potential of information technologies to improve public service delivery and empower citizens in the context of two unusual randomized natural experiments occurring within one particular bureaucratic process: the renewal of a national identification card by the...

This paper explores the extent to which individuals trust, reciprocate, cooperate and pool risk by using a battery of field experiments containing the trust game, the voluntary contributions mechanism and the risk pooling game; applied in six capital cities in Latin America. The results suggest...