E-governance, Accountability, and Leakage in Public Programs: Experimental Evidence from a Financial Management Reform in India

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Clement Imbert, Santhosh Mathew, Rohini Pande

NBER Working Paper No. 22803
Issued in November 2016

---- Acknowledgments ----

We thank Abhishek Anand, Madeline Duhon, Pooja Khosla, Shweta Rajwade, M.R. Sharan, Niki Shrestha and Pankaj Verma for excellent research assistance. We thank the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and the International Growth Centre (IGC) for financial support. We thank Julien Labonne, Eliana la Ferrara, Rema Hanna, Ben Olken, Debraj Ray, and Sandip Sukhtankar for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

---- Disclosure of Financial Relationships for Esther Duflo ----

As the principal secretary of Bihar’s Department of Rural Development, Santhosh Mathew was involved in the design of this reform and early implementation efforts. However, all views and errors are solely ours and this paper does not represent the view of the Ministry of Rural Development or any part of the Government of India. The project was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at Harvard, IFMR, and MIT (COUHES Protocol 1207005145). This study is registered in the AEA RCT Registry and the unique identifying number is AEARCTR-0000009.

---- Disclosure of Financial Relationships for Santhosh Mathew ----

As the principal secretary of Bihar’s Department of Rural Development, Santhosh Mathew was involved in the design of this reform. However, this paper does not represent the views of Bihar’s Department of Rural Development or Government of India’s Ministry of Rural Development where he is currently the Joint Secretary.

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