In 2010, we informed a random set of Delhi councilors, some ineligible for re-election in their current ward, that a newspaper would report on their performance shortly prior to the 2012 city elections. Using slum dwellers' spending preferences, we created a councilor-specific index of pro-poor...

Community targeting of vote payments -- defined as the saturation of entire neighborhoods with cash prior to elections -- is widespread in the developing world. In this paper, we utilize laboratory experiments conducted in the U.S. and Kenya to demonstrate that, relative to individual targeting,...

Community targeting of vote payments — defined as the saturation of entire neighborhoods with cash prior to elections — is widespread in the developing world. In this paper, we utilize laboratory experiments conducted in the U.S. and Kenya to demonstrate that, relative to individual...

This article evaluates a body of recent work that uses field and natural experiments to answer the question of whether informed voters can enforce better governance. A common finding in the literature is that voter behavior is malleable and that information about the political process and...