Journal articles published externally
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
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Publication Corruption in Public Service Delivery : An Experimental Analysis(2009) Barr, Abigail; Lindelow, Magnus; Serneels, PieterTo improve our understanding of corruption in service delivery, we use a newly designed game that allows us to investigate the effects of the institutional environment on the behavior of service providers and their monitors. We focus on the effect of four different factors: whether monitors are accountable to the service recipients, the degree of observability of service providers' effort, the providers' wages and the providers' professional norms. In accordance with theory, we find that service providers perform better when monitors are elected by service recipients and when their effort is more easily observed. However, there is only weak evidence that service providers perform better when paid more. Monitors are more vigilant when elected and when service providers are paid more. Playing the game with Ethiopian nursing students, we also find that those with greater exposure to the Ethiopian public health sector perform less well, either as provider or as monitor, when the experiment is framed as a public health provision scenario, suggesting that experience and norms affect behavior.Publication Corruption and Concession Renegotiations : Evidence from the Water and Transport Sectors in Latin America(2009) Guasch, J. LuisNumerous renegotiations have plagued water and transport concession contracts in Latin America. Using a panel dataset of over 300 concession contracts from Latin America between 1989 and 2000, we show that country-level corruption is a significant determinant of these renegotiations and that the effect of corruption varies depending on the type of renegotiations considered. While a more corrupt environment clearly leads to more firm-led renegotiations, it significantly reduces the incidence of government-led ones. The paper then discusses and tests the likely channels through which these different effects of corruption arise, looking in particular at the interactions between country-level corruption and relevant microeconomic institutions.Publication The Simple Economics of Extortion: Evidence from Trucking in Aceh(2009) Olken, Benjamin A.; Barron, PatrickThis paper tests whether the behavior of corrupt officials is consistent with standard industrial organization theory. We designed a study in which surveyors accompanied Indonesian truck drivers on 304 trips, during which they observed over 6,000 illegal payments to police, soldiers, and weigh station attendants. Using plausibly exogenous changes in the number of checkpoints, we show that market structure affects the level of illegal payments. We further show that corrupt officials use complex pricing schemes, including third-degree price discrimination and a menu of two-part tariffs. Our findings illustrate the importance of considering the market structure for bribes when designing anticorruption policy.Publication Subject Pool Effects in a Corruption Experiment: A Comparison of Indonesian Public Servants and Indonesian Students(2009) Alatas, Vivi; Cameron, Lisa; Chaudhuri, Ananish; Erkal, Nisvan; Gangadharan, LataWe report results from a corruption experiment with Indonesian public servants and Indonesian students. Our results suggest that the Indonesian public servant subjects have a significantly lower tolerance of corruption than the Indonesian students. We find no evidence that this is due to a selection effect. The reasons given by the subjects for their behaviour suggest that the differences in behavior across the subject pools are driven by their different real life experiences. For example, when abstaining from corruption, public servants more often cite the need to reduce the social costs of corruption as a reason for their actions, and when engaging in corruption, they cite low government salaries or a belief that corruption is a necessary evil in the current environment. In contrast, students give more simplistic moral reasons. We conclude by emphasizing that results obtained from different subject pools can complement each other in illuminating different aspects of the same problem.Publication The State and International Development Management: Commentary from International Development Management Practitioners(2008) Bertucci, Guido; Cooley, Larry; Fn'Piere, Patricia A.; Hughes, Paul D.; Manning, NickPoverty, instability, terrorism, and the emergence of new global actors characterize some of the central challenges facing twenty-first-century development and administration. Derick W. Brinkerhoff, a distinguished scholar in this field, delivered this Ferrel Heady Roundtable Lecture in 2007. He explores broadly the evolution of contemporary thinking concerning international development management. From his analysis, he draws thought-provoking clues regarding what works and what research questions remain to be answered. His central thesis: Lessons from past experience need to better inform current policy and practice. Five seasoned development administrators respond critically to Brinkerhoff's arguments, offering PAR readers an informative, insightful, and germane intellectual exchange.Publication Public Spending and Outcomes: Does Governance Matter?(2008) Rajkumar, Andrew Sunil; Swaroop, VinayaThis paper studies the links between public spending, governance, and outcomes. We examine the role of governance--measured by the level of corruption and the quality of bureaucracy--in determining the efficacy of public spending in improving human development outcomes. Our analysis contributes to our understanding of the relationship between public spending, governance and outcomes, and helps explain the surprising result that public spending often does not yield the expected improvement in outcomes. We show empirically that the differences in the efficacy of public spending can be largely explained by the quality of governance. Public health spending lowers child mortality rates more in countries with good governance. Similarly, public spending on primary education becomes more effective in increasing primary education attainment in countries with good governance. More generally, public spending has virtually no impact on health and education outcomes in poorly governed countries. These findings have important implications for enhancing the development effectiveness of public spending. The lessons are particularly relevant for developing countries, where public spending on education and health is relatively low, and the state of governance is often poor.Publication Resources for Sale: Corruption, Democracy and the Natural Resource Curse(2008) Bulte, Erwin; Damania, RichardA puzzling piece of empirical evidence suggests that resource-abundant countries tend to grow slower than their resource-poor counterparts. We attempt to explain this phenomenon by developing a lobbying game in which rent seeking firms interact with corrupt governments. The presence or absence of political competition, as well as the potential costs of political transitions, turn out to be key elements in generating the 'resource curse.' These variables define the degree of freedom that incumbent governments have in pursuing development policies that maximize surplus in the lobbying game, but put the economy off its optimal path.