The implementation of social policies is often hampered by the fact that local decision-makers may be unwilling or unable to implement the policy as intended by the central government. In contrast to research that focuses on incentivizing and holding local decision makers accountable, we examine capacity constraints in the context of beneficiary selection. Using a large-scale randomized trial in Bangladesh, we find that training and data provision improved knowledge of selection criteria. However, evidence of better targeting was limited, except for easily observable indicators of vulnerability. Improvements in targeting were more pronounced in committees led by highly educated chairpersons.

Social pensions aim to mitigate old-age poverty. This objective may be compromised family members react to the public support and reduce their private support for the older person especially when pension amounts are low. In the Indian context, I exploit age cutoffs varying at the state level to instrument social pension receipt and address the exclusion restriction by accounting for the age and physical frailty of the respondent. The results show that receiving a social pension reduces the likelihood of living with a son. Sons do not compensate for their absence through remittances. The results highlight the importance of unintended behavioral effects.

We collaborate with Saarthi Education Foundation in urban India that implements a low-cost program following the Japanese Kumon model in which students complete worksheets that slowly increase in difficulty. Using administrative data to measure learning and engagement and survey data of parents and the NGO teachers, we examine the predictors of learning progression and student engagement. 

Primary survey and lab-in-the-field data shows a poor targeting performance in Bangladesh. On the one hand, personal relationships predict social pension receipt. On the other hand, the data shows a severe lack of state capacity.  

We examine whether and how a career guidance program in school can support students in planning for a professional future and continuing their skill formation. We focus on young women from disadvantaged backgrounds who are at risk of not completing skill formation and not entering the labor force. 

Governments in developing countries struggle to reach intended beneficiaries when targeting social transfers towards vulnerable populations. Rates of eligible individuals not receiving social transfers and ineligible individuals receiving them tend to be high, constraining the effectiveness of such anti-poverty programs. While interventions to incentivize or monitor local agents in charge of selecting beneficiaries are typically expensive, an important complementary and cost-effective approach could be to reform eligibility criteria to facilitate the selection of beneficiaries. Whether reforms should focus on reducing the number of rules, or selecting criteria which are easy to verify, or do both remains an unanswered question. We address this knowledge gap based on India’s social pension scheme for elderly poor. We find that making eligibility criteria easier to verify has the potential to achieve a substantial improvement in the targeting performance through a reduction in the exclusion error. Those who meet the relevant criteria have a much higher chance of actually becoming beneficiaries. Since eligibility criteria can be changed at low cost, this suggests a viable route for reform in many developing countries. However, a major caveat remains that criteria must sufficiently well reflect actual poverty if the more accurate selection of beneficiaries according to formal criteria shall also translate into actual poverty reduction. 

Going beyond commonly studied sociodemographic predictors of the willingness to get vaccinated, we examine a range of behavioral correlates. For the important group of hospital employees, we show that they are more likely to get vaccinated if they perceive vaccination as the prevailing social norm and  if they are more future-oriented. We thereby contribute to the public health communication for future vaccination campaigns. 

Mask-wearing motivations depend on age even for hospital employees. Older employees are motivated by self-regarding risk preferences, younger employees are also motivated by other-regarding concerns.

Social pension eligibility reforms in the late 2000s reduced targeting errors but exclusion errors remain very high. A hypothetical random allocation shows that benefits of targeting social pensions are very limited. Non-poor elderly exploit the unwarranted possession of below-poverty line ration cards and their personal connections to local government officials.