Teacher absenteeism and shirking are common problems in developing countries. While monitoring teachers should ameliorate those problems, mobilizing parents to do so often leads to small or even negative effects on learning outcomes. This paper provides causal evidence that this might result...

The top 12 development journals published a total of 18,329 papers during the period 2000.2020. Out of these, just 51 focused on sanitation and related issues, which are the focus of this review. Results were mixed on the efficiency of sanitation delivery since political factors and...

What is decentralization, what is its underpinning rationale, and why might it matter for least-developed countries? This chapter has two goals: (i) to distill the enormous academic and policy literature on international experiences of decentralization into clear empirical conclusions; and (ii)...

Teacher absenteeism and shirking are common problems in developing countries. While monitoring teachers should ameliorate those problems, mobilizing parents to do so often leads to small or even negative effects on learning outcomes. This paper provides causal evidence that this might result...

El gobernador contribuye con su análisis sobre la imparcialidad y la autonomía de las autoridades económicas independientes a la revisión de «las medidas necesarias de refuerzo de la imparcialidad e independencia de autoridades independientes y organismos de regulación» que realiza esta...

El gobernador contribuye con su análisis sobre la imparcialidad y la autonomía de las autoridades económicas independientes a la revisión de «las medidas necesarias de refuerzo de la imparcialidad e independencia de autoridades independientes y organismos de regulación» que realiza esta...

The rise of high-stakes accountability programs was one of the most noticeable changes in the U.S. education system during the 1990s and early 2000s. We measure the impact of these programs on students' long-run outcomes. We find that exposure to accountability modestly but detectably increased...

This paper proposes new composite measures of relative and dynamic state performance to improve governance and delivery of public programs in developing countries with a federal structure. We rank the performance of 19 major Indian states on two large development programs launched by the Indian...

Short-term re-election strategies are widely used by governments around the world. This is problematic if governments can maximize their re-election chances by prioritizing short-term spending before an election over long-term reforms. This paper tests whether longer program exposure has a...

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of accountability on fiscal capacity. It adopts an instrumental variable approach using, as an instrument, the measurement of how far, on average, official language differs from ordinary language. The main hypothesis is that if the average citizen...

This paper investigates whether the Covid-19 crisis has affected the way we think about (political) institutions, as well as our broader (policy) attitudes and values. We fielded large online survey experiments in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, well into the first wave of the...

Teaching is often assumed to be a relatively stressful occupation and occupational stress among teachers has been linked to poor mental health, attrition from the profession, and decreased effectiveness in the classroom. Despite widespread concern about teachers' mental health, however, little...

The G7 practices forms of external accountability to answer for its behaviour to the outside world and internal accountability to steer the implementation of what it has decided. To follow up on its development-related commitments, it has set up a permanent framework to produce annual public...

Stefanie Gäbler prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in March 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of six distinct empirical essays...

Algorithmic decision‐making (ADM) systems have come to support, pre‐empt or substitute for human decisions in manifold areas, with potentially significant impacts on individuals' lives. Achieving transparency and accountability has been formulated as a general goal regarding the use of these...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the complex relationship between global business and biodiversity. Since business organizations impact biodiversity degradation and at the same time have to face the consequences of the loss of biodiversity, it seems necessary to further investigate the...

We analyze the impact of elected competitors from the same constituency on legislative shirking in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2017. The German electoral system ensures that there is always at least one federal legislator per constituency with a varying number of elected competitors from...

News outlets worldwide increasingly adopt user- and system-driven personalisation to individualise their news delivery. Yet, the technical implementation of news personalisation systems, in particular the one relying on algorithmic news recommenders (ANRs) and tailoring individual news...

This paper provides an overview of national practices for improving the accountability and performance of SOEs by examining relevant legislation, policies, and practices in Asian and other economies. It assesses these against internationally agreed good practices exemplified by the OECD...

Are new mayors more responsive to disasters than their reelected counterparts? The identification strategy is based on slim vote margin in which new and reelected mayors are found to be as if randomly assigned. We find that with greater storm exposure: new mayors spend more on health sector than...

Short-term re-election strategies are widely used by governments around the world. This is problematic if governments can maximize their re-election chances by prioritizing short-term spending before an election over long-term reforms. This paper tests whether longer program exposure has a...

Teaching is often assumed to be a relatively stressful occupation and occupational stress among teachers has been linked to poor mental health, attrition from the profession, and decreased effectiveness in the classroom. Despite widespread concern about teachers' mental health, however, little...

This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 crisis has affected the way we think about (political) institutions, as well as our broader (policy) attitudes and values. We fielded large online survey experiments in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, well into the first wave of the...

There are good reasons to expect that citizens will appreciate local government more than central government. Sure enough, previous studies have found support for this assumption. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is theoretically far too simple to think that decentralization and citizen's...

News outlets worldwide increasingly adopt user- and system-driven personalisation to individualise their news delivery. Yet, the technical implementation of news personalisation systems, in particular the one relying on algorithmic news recommenders (ANRs) and tailoring individual news...

We analyze the impact of elected competitors from the same constituency on legislative shirking in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2017. The German electoral system ensures that there is always at least one federal legislator per constituency with a varying number of elected competitors from...

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of accountability on fiscal capacity. It adopts an instrumental variable approach using, as an instrument, the measurement of how far, on average, official language differs from ordinary language. The main hypothesis is that if the average citizen...