Increasing State Capacity and Accountability to Improve Local Governance: Evidence for the Targeting of Social Pensions in Bangladesh
Project description
Aims and central research questions
Our project aims to investigate selection of receivers of social transfers to the elderly poor in rural Bangladesh. We test interventions to improve selection processes for social pensions performed by local government officials. Focusing on these social pensions is interesting for two reasons. First, the elderly poor are an increasingly important but largely understudied part of the population in many developing countries. Second, they represent a particularly vulnerable and hard to reach target group, and mechanisms that can be proven to work for such groups have the potential to work even better in other contexts.
From our pilot study carried out in spring 2018, we know that the actual selection of beneficiaries, which is done once a year, is virtually orthogonal to the central government’s eligibility criteria. Local government officials lack the knowledge and tools to target the benefits as they should according to the guidelines by the National Government. They select either on an ad hoc basis in open field selections or without any transparency in closed door meetings. There is thus an urgent need for improvement. Our project performs interventions (see below) to assess how beneficiaries of social pensions might be selected according to the National Government’s criteria using resources available to local authorities.
Background
State capacity and accountability are notoriously weak in many developing countries. Public services are therefore often mistargeted and inefficient, which is recognized as a major problem by international organizations like the World Bank and the UN. These problems are also well documented in the academic literature, but these studies which provide rigorous evidence on effective remedies focus almost exclusively on accountability, and largely ignore that local officials responsible for these services may simply lack the capacity to respond to public demands. The field experiment in our project shifts the focus to the role of capacity – a potentially equally important channel to improve public service delivery.
Methods
We evaluate a state-capacity-building intervention for the national Old Age Allowance program in Bangladesh using a randomized controlled trial in which in randomly selected municipalities an intervention with two components is either implemented or not. Developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Welfare, the intervention includes training of local-government representatives on the national-government guidelines for the selection of beneficiaries and the provision of data on the target group. Our empirical analysis focuses on comparing the beneficiary selection in "treated municipalities" with the beneficiary selection in municipalities belonging to the control group.
Discipline(s):
Economics, Political Science
Starting date:
01 - 03 - 2018 (prior pilot project);
01 - 03 - 2019 (Cluster project)
Project partners
Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut
The Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut (TWI) is associated with the University of Konstanz. A cross-border project between Germany and Switzerland, the TWI is a centre for Experimental Economic Research in the Lake Constance region.
In the Lakelab, the TWI laboratory for Experimental Economic Research at the University of Konstanz, people make decisions in experiments with monetary consequences. Depending on their own decisions and those of others, the participants earn different amounts of money. In this manner, a variety of economic situations can be analysed, for instance how markets function, when people cooperate, or which types of people are risk-seeking.
ZHAW Leading House South Asia and Iran
The ZHAW is the Leading House for research collaboration with partner institutions in South Asia and Iran. Mandated by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in 2017, the ZHAW promotes and fosters scientific cooperation with key institutions in South Asia and Iran during the funding period 2017-2020. The South Asia region includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with Iran as an additional country.
International Growth Center, London School of Economics
The International Growth Centre (IGC) aims to promote sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research.
The IGC directs a global network of world-leading researchers and in-country teams in Africa and South Asia and works closely with partner governments to generate high-quality research and policy advice on key growth challenges. Based at LSE and in partnership with the University of Oxford, the IGC is majority funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University
BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health (BRAC JPGSPH) was founded in 2004 to address the unmet public health challenges of the Developing World. The School was co-founded by BRAC, icddr,b and Brac University in recognition of the fact that the public health needs of a Developing Country like Bangladesh requires community-based immersive teaching and learning to provide locally innovated research with sustainable solutions. The School is named after James P Grant, former executive director of UNICEF, who dedicated his whole life to the cause of international development.
ARCED Foundation
The Aureolin Research, Consultancy and Expertise Development (ARCED) Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2013 which aims to provide comprehensive consulting and research services at home and abroad. Besides, ARCED aims to promote knowledge in the field of development, business and other related areas through training, certificate courses, workshops and seminars.
Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) Bangladesh
Established in 1972 to assist with relief and rehabilitation of greater Rangpur-Dinajpur region immediately following the War of Independence, the RDRS program evolved into a sectoral then comprehensive effort. Formerly the Bangladesh field program of the Geneva-based Lutheran World Federation/Department for World Service, RDRS became a national development organization in 1997. RDRS is now providing its development support to over 2,000,000 people in 20 districts in Bangladesh.
Prof. Dr. Katharina Michaelowa
Katharina Michaelowa is Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich and at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS), ETH and University of Zurich. Her research on policies and politics of developing countries, international development cooperation, and international climate policy led to over 100 publications including several books, and articles in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Organizations, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Public Choice, World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Climate Policy and Climatic Change. In addition, she is a member of the Presiding Board of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) where she is responsible for the area of international research cooperation.
Atonu Rabbani
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka
Kumar Biswas
World Bank; also University of Konstanz starting in fall 2020