TY  - JOUR
AU  - Banerjee, Abhijit
AU  - Duflo, Esther
AU  - Imbert, Clement
AU  - Mathew, Santhosh
AU  - Pande, Rohini
TI  - E-governance, Accountability, and Leakage in Public Programs: Experimental Evidence from a Financial Management Reform in India
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 22803
PY  - 2016
Y2  - November 2016
DO  - 10.3386/w22803
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22803
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22803.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Abhijit Banerjee
Department of Economics, E52-540
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/253-8855
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: banerjee@mit.edu

Esther Duflo
Department of Economics, E52-544
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/258-7013
E-Mail: eduflo@mit.edu

Clement Imbert
Department of Economics
The Social Sciences Building
The University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
E-Mail: C.Imbert@warwick.ac.uk

Santhosh Mathew
Joint Secretary
Ministry of Rural Development
Government of India
R 254-B Krishi Bhawan
New Delhi 110 001
India
Tel: +91-9810207879
E-Mail: indiaruraldevelop@gmail.com

Rohini Pande
Yale University
Department of Economics
27 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel: 617-384-5267
Fax: 617-496-8753
E-Mail: rohini.pande@yale.edu
AB  - In collaboration with the Government of Bihar, India, we conducted a large-scale experiment to evaluate whether transparency in fiscal transfer systems can increase accountability and reduce corruption in the implementation of a workfare program. The reforms introduced electronic fund-flow, cut out administrative tiers, and switched the basis of transfer amounts from forecasts to documented expenditures. Treatment reduced leakages along three measures: expenditures and hours claimed dropped while an independent household survey found no impact on actual employment and wages received; a matching exercise reveals a reduction in fake households on payrolls; and local program officials’ self-reported median personal assets fell.
ER  -