Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program wi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Olken, Benjamin A., Onishi, Junko, Wong, Susan
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	American Economic Association 2014
Subjects:	foreign aid health policy education policy maternal health gender discrimination
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20533

id	okr-10986-20533
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-205332021-04-23T14:03:56Z Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia Olken, Benjamin A. Onishi, Junko Wong, Susan foreign aid health policy education policy maternal health gender discrimination We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program without incentives, or control. Incentives initially improved preventative health indicators, particularly in underdeveloped areas, and spending efficiency increased. While school enrollments improved overall, incentives had no differential impact on education, and incentive health effects diminished over time. Reductions in neonatal mortality in non-incentivized areas did not persist with incentives. We find no systematic scoring manipulation nor funding reallocation toward richer areas. 2014-11-13T20:41:44Z 2014-11-13T20:41:44Z 2014-10 Journal Article American Economic Journal: Applied Economics http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20533 en_US CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo American Economic Association American Economic Association Publications & Research :: Journal Article Indonesia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	foreign aid health policy education policy maternal health gender discrimination
spellingShingle	foreign aid health policy education policy maternal health gender discrimination Olken, Benjamin A. Onishi, Junko Wong, Susan Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
geographic_facet	Indonesia
description	We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program without incentives, or control. Incentives initially improved preventative health indicators, particularly in underdeveloped areas, and spending efficiency increased. While school enrollments improved overall, incentives had no differential impact on education, and incentive health effects diminished over time. Reductions in neonatal mortality in non-incentivized areas did not persist with incentives. We find no systematic scoring manipulation nor funding reallocation toward richer areas.
format	Journal Article
author	Olken, Benjamin A. Onishi, Junko Wong, Susan
author_facet	Olken, Benjamin A. Onishi, Junko Wong, Susan
author_sort	Olken, Benjamin A.
title	Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
title_short	Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
title_full	Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
title_fullStr	Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
title_full_unstemmed	Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia
title_sort	should aid reward performance? evidence from a field experiment on health and education in indonesia
publisher	American Economic Association
publishDate	2014
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20533
_version_	1764445734857342976

Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia

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