Research in progress
A field experiment to identify the effects of information on political behavior
- Working paper on the effects of the experiment on voting behavior: Can information that raises voter expectations improve accountability? A field experiment in Mali (pdf)
- Data analysis plan
Recent research suggests that improving voter information could be a promising way to increase government accountability in new democracies from the bottom up. But what kind of information is necessary, how should it be conveyed, and what are the mechanisms through which it achieves an impact? I seek to address these questions by examining the relative impacts of two types of information on voter and politician behavior, namely, information about government capacity and information about government performance. I conduct a field experiment across locally-governed municipalities in Mali. 64 of these communes are randomly assigned to receive a two-part civics course. Half are assigned to the first treatment with only information about the basics of democracy and local government, and half receive an additional component on relative government performance. Impacts are measured through structured observations at 95 town hall meetings, a log of civic activity in the 570 sample villages, 5,700 individual-level surveys, and surveys with village and commune leaders. Preliminary results confirm existing evidence that voter behavior is malleable: in voting simulations, citizens in treated
communities vote more often based on performance than other dimensions such as
kinship or gift-giving. They are also more likely to challenge their leaders
and engage in public-spirited activities. Incumbent politicians, however,
appear to react negatively: they hold fewer public meetings in treated communes
and, in a list experiment, said they were less likely to campaign on
transparency in the next election. I will update this page as new data and analyses become available.
Is democracy working in poor countries? Determinants of local government performance (failure) in Mali (paper)
What explains the persistence of bad governance in poor countries in the presence of regular elections? There is a growing evidence base that poorly-informed voters are one cause of bad governance. Another may be a lack of real competition, or the capacity for politicians to collude. I explore these causes of democratic failure in one developing democracy, Mali. Using a unique dataset on local public goods paired with municipal election data, I analyze variation in local public goods provision as a proxy for government performance. Confirming what has been found in other contexts, I find public goods provision is higher where voters are better informed. I also find that more competitive elections and town councils less prone to collusion are associated with greater public goods. To identify the effect of competition, I use a regression discontinuity design; and I use propensitiy score matching to reduce bias in analyzing the effect of information. A novel finding in the data is that information and competition interact such that they work to improve public goods provision only in localities where both are present.
The effect of caste on economic organization: A case study of Mali (proposal)
In this paper, I propose a strategy to study the effects of caste on economic outcomes. Using an institutional framework, I discuss the characteristics of caste that are economically-relevant and then make predictions about how and when the persistence of caste and Mali will undermine or reinforce economic development. Specifically, I argue that informal institutions are more likely to be welfare-promoting in the short-term, at a local level, and where low-skilled labor is concerned. To test this, I propose to study the caste system in Mali which exhibits considerable variation over time and across space. I hypothesize that castes are more likely to survive and prosper when their specialized economic activity is in demand, their activity is low-skilled or involves few inputs, and the type of economic activity they undertake is on a small scale. I also hypothesize that castes should improve economic outcomes in less developed areas and undermine economic advancement in more developed areas.
Research assistantships