co production of frugal innovation case of low cost reverse osmosis water filters in india abstract the increased role of market actors in the provision of drinking water has implied a greater salience to issues of affordability with its emphasis of increasing affordability without compromising on quality the idea of frugal innovation holds out particular promise in resource constrained environments in this paper we study the case of low cost household water filters using reverse osmosis ro technology in the indian city of ahmedabad using mixed methods we find the citizen to be an active participant a co producer in the frugal innovation process that allows small scale local entrepreneurs to customize their products and services to the needs and price expectations of their customers this co production process that has been facilitated by the proximity of the user with the local entrepreneur has not only reduced private costs borne by users but also been as successful as their more expensive counterparts in meeting the diverse needs of end users further we find that the context facilitating such service co production is characterized by institutional co production with actions of both the state and citizen creating the demand for innovation around more affordable private solutions while there is much to celebrate in the value created by the frugal innovation we believe the implications of the contested and unregulated water filter technology suggest reasons for caution

democracy visibility and public good provision we examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across a multiplicity of public goods we show that a visibility effect distorts governmental resource allocation such that it helps explain why governments neglect provision of essential public goods despite their considerable benefits we show that greater democratization widens the gap in resource allocation between more visible such as famine prevention versus less visible such as malnutrition prevention public goods up to an intermediate level of democracy beyond this level this gap decreases furthermore public goods with low visibility are prone to multiple equilibria in resource allocation with voter expectations being shown to be important

an empirical analysis of state and private sector provision of water services in africa under pressure from donor agencies and international financial institutions such as the world bank some developing countries have experimented with the privatization of water services this article reviews the econometric evidence on the effects of water privatization in developing economies and presents new results using statistical data envelopment analysis and stochastic cost frontier techniques and data from africa the analysis fails to show evidence of better performance by private utilities than by state owned utilities among the reasons why water privatization could prove problematic in lower income economies are the technology of water provision and the nature of the product transaction costs and regulatory weaknesses

the relative unimportance of a nonmarket willingness to pay for timber harvesting abstract the magnitude of a nonmarket willingness to pay for logging of native forests in southeastern australia is estimated using the contingent valuation method this willingness to pay is apparently motivated by both the monetary and social costs of unemployment and a nonmarket intrinsic production value we speculate that this nonmarket value for production may arise where a traditional land use is involved willingness to pay for intrinsic production value is small 4 in comparison to the nonmarket economic value of reserving the same forests in national parks whilst this result may not be transferable to resource allocation issues which involve significant traditional land use it does suggest that neglect of such a willingness to pay has not significantly prejudiced the results of past benefit cost analyses related to the preservation of natural environments

water markets market reform and the urban poor results from jakarta indonesia abstract roughly 20 of the eight million persons in jakarta receive water from municipal water connections to their homes remaining supplies are essentially private and include street vendors standpipes and wells the last of these an inexpensive but increasingly contaminated source in many areas an expansion of the network of in house connections is in progress but will take several decades to complete in the interim various strategies have been advanced to deal with persistent problems of access to good water by the poor this study examines the impacts of one such plan put to action the april 1990 deregulation measure permitting private homes with water connections to resell municipal water we present preliminary evidence that the primary social benefits of deregulation are the money savings and increased consumption by former vendor and standpipe customers in most respects the aggregate effect is equivalent to a costless expansion in the standpipe system with the difference on the supply side that significant transfers from vendors and standpipe operators to household resellers may occur

how important is the capacity of local governments for improvements in welfare evidence from decentralised uganda abstract decentralisation is often claimed to be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty but empirical evidence is scarce this paper seeks to gain further insights into the relationship between decentralisation and welfare by investigating the role of local governments capacity for household consumption and school enrolment in uganda using household survey data it finds suggestive evidence that both household consumption and school enrolment are positively related with the level of capacity of district governments

integrated value assessment using paired comparisons abstract a survey methodology is described which uses paired comparisons in combination with contingent valuation to assess individuals values concerning the conservation of a rare mammal species the mountain pygmy possum burramys parvus value expressions which can be accommodated by economic theory are distinguished from those which are best represented by a noncompensatory preference structure a procedure for aggregating data involving these two categories of value expression is described this integrated value assessment is more inclusive than the conventional approach of using contingent valuation and other economic data within a benefit cost framework a comprehensive assessment of the value implications of a proposal can be undertaken in which the actual rather than assumed structures of individuals values are taken into account

institutional solutions to the asymmetric information problem in health and development services for the poor summary the world s poorest pay for professional services and thus are in a market whether the services are provided in the public or private sectors the associated problems of unequal information are particularly acute in undergoverned countries where state regulation is weak we systematically review the evidence on solutions to these problems in a variety of professions payments by clients are more likely to have a positive effect on quality if they are made through locally managed organizations rather than directly to individual practitioners particularly if those organizations have an institutionalized history of other regarding values and incorporate client participation

beyond the short versus long accountability route dichotomy using multi track accountability pathways to study performance of rural water services in uganda summary performance of social service delivery is often linked with effective accountability accountability studies increasingly acknowledge that studying one type of accountability relation at a time is too restrictive our study aims to correct for this and explores the effectiveness of combinations of different accountability mechanisms we take the world development report s accountability triangle as a starting point and adapt it in three ways first we refine the long route to accountability into three tracks by differentiating between the three groups of demand side actors political accountability opposition citizen led and civil society led social accountability second for each track we take into account the demand and supply side and the availability of supply demand interfaces finally we adopt a holistic approach through the simultaneous incorporation of both the short and long with the different tracks routes to test its usefulness we use our refined accountability framework to study the accountability constellations and their link to performance in uganda s rural water sector building on qca our findings identify the long three track route supply interface all three demand actors and the citizen led social accountability route as viable routes to high water service performance in ugandan districts additionally a set of new hybrid accountability arrangements are identified while contrary to theoretical assumptions the short route clients to service providers does not prove effective

how different is the efficiency of public and private water companies in asia several studies have compared the efficiency of publicly and privately owned water utilities and reached conflicting conclusions on the impact of ownership on efficiency this article provides further evidence by estimating a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of asian and pacific regional water companies the results show that efficiency is not significantly different in private companies than in public ones

corruption investments and contributions to public goods experimental evidence from rural liberia we analyze how corruption affects incentives to invest or contribute to public goods we obtain a proxy for corruption among liberian community leaders by keeping track of a flow of inputs associated with a development intervention measuring these inputs before and after giving them in custody to the chief we then use the gap between these measurements missing inputs to explain variation in investment behavior of villagers investment behavior is gauged with two simple artefactual field experiments our main results are that corruption i undermines incentives for voluntary contributions to local public goods and ii may reduce private investments of individuals subject to rent seeking by the chief in real life we also provide weaker evidence that the impact of corruption on investments and contributions to public goods is heterogeneous this impact may be gender specific and appears to vary with accessibility of communities

power struggle dispute and alliance over local resources analyzing democratic decentralization of natural resources through the lenses of africa inland fisheries summary this paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs co management in sub saharan africa partly challenging the current narrative but in line with experience in other sectors e g forestry the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive in most cases fisheries co management failed to improve governance but simply altered the distribution of power and responsibility amongst the different stakeholders in this new political landscape poorly designed reforms have enabled a variety of usual and new local actors to advance their own agendas often at the detriment of the direct end users fisherfolk

management of bureaucrats and public service delivery evidence from the nigerian civil service we study how the management practices bureaucrats operate under relate to the quantity and quality of public services delivered we do so exploiting data from the nigerian civil service for 4700 public sector projects we have hand coded independent engineering assessments of project completion rates and delivered quality we supplement this with a survey eliciting management practices for bureaucrats in the 63 civil service organizations responsible for these projects building on bloom and van reenen 2007 management practices matter a one standard deviation increase in bureaucrat s autonomy signi cantly increases project completion rates by 18 a one standard deviation increase in practices related to incentives monitoring of bureaucrats signi cantly lowers project completion rates by 14 we show the negative impacts of incentive provision monitoring arise because bureaucrats multi task and incentives are poorly targeted and because these management practices capture elements of subjective performance evaluation that leave scope for dysfunctional responses from bureaucrats to support a causal interpretation of our ndings we document the determinants of management practices and examine channels through which organizations might endogenously adjust management practices our results provide novel insights into how changes in how bureaucrats are managed can have potentially large impacts on public service delivery in a developing country context jel classi cation j33 j38 o20

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

renewable energy integration in zonal markets in this paper we investigate the impact of zonal network management in the operation of power systems with significant levels of renewable energy integration our study is inspired by the current state of the european energy market and we focus on a case study of the central western european cwe system first we present a hierarchy of models that account for unit commitment the separation of energy and reserves and the simplified representation of transmission constraints in a zonal market in order to examine the impact of these factors on efficiency in a regime of large scale renewable energy integration second we simulate operations of the cwe system under the zonal market design using a detailed instance that consists of 656 thermal generators 679 nodes and 1073 lines with multiarea renewable energy production and 15 minute time resolution zonal market operations are compared against deterministic and stochastic unit commitment using high performance computing in order to tackle the scale of the resulting models we find that market design can have an influence on cost efficiency which far exceeds the benefits of stochastic unit commitment relative to deterministic unit commitment we conduct a detailed analysis of the numerical results in order to explain the relative performance of the different models

the coal question that emissions trading has not answered abstract can emissions trading assist with the task of placing a limit on coal production and consumption in australia this paper outlines a critical political economy perspective on coal and a flagship market mechanism for emissions reduction the prospects for an effective emissions trading scheme in coal dominated economies are considered in light of its theoretical justifications as well as recent attempts to price carbon in australia emissions trading is a weak instrument that does not address real world failures of coal governance at their theoretical best carbon prices produce marginal changes to the cost structure of production in practice the australian case demonstrates emissions trading is an attempt to displace the emissions reduction task away from coal through compensation arrangements and offsetting in light of the urgent need to rapidly reduce global emissions direct regulation and democratisation of coal production and consumption should be flagship climate policy

preference structures property rights and paired comparisons the method of paired comparisons was used to determine the structure of survey participants value expressions for australian native forests the same participants were also surveyed using the contingent valuation method cvm data from the paired comparisons were used to construct preference maps which enabled identification of participants whose value expressions were structurally incompatible with economic welfare theory in particular those participants who expressed their values according to lexicographic preferences for some of these participants cvm results did not provide appropriate measures of wtp the surveys also demonstrated the importance of allowing participants own views on property rights to dictate the valuation context offered

does commercialization undermine the benefits of decentralization for local services provision evidence from mexico s urban water and sanitation sector summary decentralization has been promoted as a means to better reflect citizen preferences and improve local services many developing countries decentralized and promoted neoliberal policies such as commercialization simultaneously leaving mayors with the responsibility of improving public services through self financing reforms this study evaluates experiences in three mexican cities to assess whether decentralization and commercialization practices have resulted in improved water and sanitation services it finds that commercialization has increased social conflict surrounding urban services provision and that local institutional constraints further undermine mayor s ability to adopt politically contentious policies the result has been stalled and uneven service improvements

incorporating discontinuous preferences into the analysis of discrete choice experiments data from a discrete choice experiment on improvements of rural landscape attributes are used to investigate the implications of discontinuous preferences on willingness to pay estimates using a multinomial error component logit model we explore differences in scale and unexplained variance between respondents with discontinuous and continuous preferences and condition taste intensities on whether or not each attribute was considered by the respondent during the evaluation of alternatives results suggest that significant improvements in model performance can be achieved when discontinuous preferences are accommodated in the econometric specification and that the magnitude and robustness of the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to discontinuous preferences

ensuring sustainable access to drinking water in sub saharan africa conflict between financial and social objectives summary we study a model explaining dynamics in water coverage that accounts for financial performances of utilities our dataset covers 25 sub saharan countries from 1996 to 2012 results suggest that access to water depends upon financial results but this relationship is not linear we find important access increases for relatively low levels of capital cost recovery and deterioration of access performances beyond a certain threshold our results are consistent with the literature about risks of corporatization and potential conflict between financial and social objectives in the water sector and they provide supporting quantitative evidence and recommendations for sector policies in the region

the future developments of the electricity prices in view of the implementation of the paris agreements will the current trends prevail or a reversal is ahead abstract we assess the impact on the european electricity market of the european union clean energy for all europeans package which implements the eu nationally determined contribution in paris cop 21 we focus on the year 2030 which is the year with defined climate targets for the assessment we employ a game theoretic framework of the wholesale electricity market with high technical detail the model is applied to two core scenarios a base scenario and a low carbon scenario to provide insights regarding the future electricity capacity generation mix cross border trade and electricity prices we also assess three additional variants of the core scenarios concerning different levels of a fossil and co2 prices b additional flexibility provided by batteries c market integration we find that the electricity prices in 2030 substantially increase from today s level driven by the increase in fuel and co2 prices the flexibility from batteries helps in mitigating the price peaks and the price volatility the increased low marginal cost electricity generation the expansion of non dispatchable and distributed capacities and the higher market integration further reduce the market power from producers in the electricity markets from today s level

has democratization reduced infant mortality in sub saharan africa evidence from micro data does democracy help babies survive in sub saharan africa by using retrospective fertility surveys conducted in 28 african countries i compare the survival of infants born to the same mother before and after democratization to disentangle the effect of democracy from that of changes in population characteristics which is infeasible with country level statistics on infant mortality i find that infant mortality falls by 1 2 percentage points 12 of the sample mean after democratization in the post cold war period relevant aspects of democracy appear to be the combination of multiparty elections and leadership change

identity and the economics of organizations on plebes first day at west point called r day they strip down to their underwear their hair is cut off they are put in uniform they then must address an older cadet with the proper salute and with the statement sir new cadet doe reports to the cadet in the red sash for the first time as ordered plebes must stand and salute and repeat and stand and salute and repeat until they get it exactly right all the while being reprimanded for every tiny mistake in the summary of david lipsky 2003 pp 145 154 who spent four years tracking a company of cadets at west point on r day you surrender your old self in stages but r day is just the beginning of the training and personal re engineering that is to come so that west point graduates emerge four years later as loyal officers in the u s army lipsky shows that despite some failure this tough program is remarkably successful in creating officers with the will to lead in battle economists current picture of organizations and work incentives has no place for the west point program and the motivations it seeks to inculcate in recruits in a standard economic model an individual s preferences are fixed and utility depends only on pecuniary variables the army s aim at west point is to change cadets preferences they wish to inculcate non economic motives in the cadets so that they have the same goals as the u s army alternatively stated the goal of west point is to change the identity of the cadets so they will think of themselves above all else as officers in the u s army they will feel bad about themselves they will lose utility if they fall short of the ideals of such an officer this change in identity

the contribution of environmental amenities to low income housing a comparative study of bangkok and jakarta central and local governments and their creditors are increasingly interested in cost recovery for public services these strategies have two aims increasing revenues and making a better connection between benefits received and consumer bills this paper estimates a hedonic model for household level data in a rare contrast of slums in two asian mega cities to provide comparative information about how the poor value environmental amenities and basic infrastructure access the results suggest that slum housing prices do reflect differentials in public service access and that rough estimates of the value of access can be cheaply and usefully obtained for planning purposes

renewable electric energy integration quantifying the value of design of markets for international transmission capacity abstract integrating large quantities of variable renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge one of the main obstacles in europe to installing at least 200 gws of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns we model the current methodology for controlling congestion at international borders and compare its results under varying penetrations of wind power with models that simulate an integrated european network using nodal localised marginal pricing the nodal pricing simulations illustrate that congestion and price patterns vary considerably between wind scenarios and within countries and that a nodal price regime could make better use of existing network capacity introducing substantial operational cost savings and reducing marginal power prices in the majority of european countries

mass media and public policy abstract if more informed voters receive favorable policies then mass media should influence policy because it provides most of the information people use in voting this paper uses a simple model to analyze the effect of mass media provision of news on a number of policy issues redistribution the size of the government sector rents and corruption the effectiveness of lobby groups and political business cycles it is easy to deal with such a wide range of issues because existing models of political competition often include informed and uniformed voters modelling mass media simply endogenizes who is informed and who is not the paper also discusses empirical evidence and point to areas for future research

building resilient health systems experimental evidence from sierra leone and the 2014 ebola outbreak this paper experimentally examines efforts aimed at improving health worker performance in the context of the 2014 15 west african ebola crisis roughly two years before the outbreak in sierra leone the study randomly assigned two accountability interventions to government run health clinics one focused on community monitoring and the other gave status awards to clinic staff the findings show that prior to the ebola crisis both interventions led to improvements in utilization of clinics patient satisfaction with the health system and child health outcomes during the crisis the interventions led to higher reported ebola cases as well as lower mortality from ebola particularly in areas with community monitoring clinics the paper explores the potential mechanisms and the findings provide evidence consistent with the following mechanism by building trust and confidence in health workers and improving the perceived quality of care provided by clinics prior to the outbreak the interventions encouraged patients to report and receive treatment the results suggest that accountability interventions not only have the power to improve health systems during normal times but also can make health systems resilient to crises that may emerge over the longer run

governance failure rethinking the institutional dimensions of urban water supply to poor households summary this paper applies a conceptual framework of governance failure to an analysis of the institutional dimensions of urban water supply provision to poor households focusing on the case of jakarta data from a household survey archives gis based mapping and interviews are used to document governance failures that create disincentives for utilities to connect poor households and for poor households to connect the paper concludes by suggesting that the debate over the relative merits of public and private provision has diverted attention from the pressing issue of governance reform and by raising the question of whether household provision of networked water supply by monopolistic providers whether public or private is universally feasible given the current water supply policy norms

community monitoring and crime evidence from chicago s safe passage program abstract this paper investigates the effect of community based monitoring on crime in the context of a school safety initiative that employed community members to monitor city blocks during students travel to and from school although we find that total crime decreased by 17 relative to neighboring non treated blocks these main effects are not the complete story we find evidence of treatment spillovers in blocks closest to treated areas but we also uncover cross crime substitution within treated blocks intertemporal reallocation of crime to non monitored periods and spatial displacement of crime into areas farther away from treated blocks our estimates of the benefit cost ratio associated with each additional civilian year of community monitoring are much larger than traditional estimates of each additional police officer year

governance and the effectiveness of public health subsidies evidence from ghana kenya and uganda abstract distributing subsidized health products through existing health infrastructure could substantially and cost effectively improve health in sub saharan africa there is however widespread concern that poor governance in particular limited health worker accountability seriously undermines the effectiveness of subsidy programs we audit targeted bed net distribution programs to quantify the extent of agency problems we find that around 80 of the eligible receive the subsidy as intended and up to 15 of subsidies are leaked to ineligible people supplementing the program with simple financial or monitoring incentives for health workers does not improve performance further and is thus not cost effective in this context

radio s impact on public spending if informed voters receive favorable policies then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not these ideas are developed in a voting model the model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major new deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio the main empirical finding is that u s counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds more funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment but controlling for these and other variables the effects of radio are large and highly significant

exposing corrupt politicians the effects of brazil s publicly released audits on electoral outcomes author s finan frederico ferraz claudio abstract this paper examines the extent to which access to information enhances political accountability based upon the results of brazil s recent anti corruption program that randomly audits municipal expenditures of federally transferred funds it estimates the effect of the disclosure of local government corruption practices upon the re election success of incumbent mayors in municipal elections comparing municipalities which were randomly audited before the elections with those audited after the analysis shows that the disclosure of audit results had a significant impact on the re election rates of mayors found to be corrupt for a one standard deviation increase in reported corruption the audit policy reduced the incumbent s likelihood of re election by 25 percent this effect is more pronounced in municipalities where radio stations are present and higher levels of corruption are identified these findings highlight the value of information and the role of the media in reducing informational asymmetries in the political process thus enabling voters to not only hold corrupt politicians accountable but also to reward non corrupt politicians

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

what determines access to piped water in rural areas evidence from small scale supply systems in rural brazil summary this paper investigates whether small scale water supply systems implemented and operated by water user associations increase access to piped water supply in rural brazil by more than systems by local governments starting from 15 to 16 in the year 2000 access rates in rural areas with water user associations increased to 33 4 in 2010 in areas with local government supply systems access rates only increased to 24 9 based on data from brazilian census and the national water and sanitation survey the empirical analysis in this paper shows that the observed difference is effectively due to project type choice additionally it points toward higher accountability as a potential reason for better results of community based projects in municipalities where social groups requested a new system before the local government started implementation and therefore public awareness for the project was higher the increase in access rates is comparable to the increase in municipalities with water user association projects the same is true if local media is present or political competition in local elections is higher as the effect of project type on access rates might be confounded by simultaneous drivers of project type choice and access rates the quantitative analysis is based on a difference in difference estimator in combination with kernel matching to overcome the endogeneity of project type the treatment effect revealed by this analysis is robust to various specification changes and the robustness checks show no structural differences between treatment and control groups that could bias the results the calculation of matching weights for the kernel matching is informed by semi structured interviews with academics and sector experts in brazil explaining the determinants of project choice the interviews highlight the political economy behind infrastructure expansion in rural brazil

returns to spending on agricultural extension the case of the national agricultural advisory services naads program of uganda the aim of this paper is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of the agricultural extension system of uganda the national agricultural advisory services naads program on household agricultural income data from two rounds of surveys of ugandan rural farm households conducted in 2004 and 2007 as well as different program evaluation methods and model specifications are used to estimate impacts and compute a rate of return the direct and indirect impact of the program is estimated at 37 95 and 27 55 increase in per capita agricultural gross revenue between 2004 and 2007 for households participating directly and indirectly in the program respectively compared to nonparticipants the rate of return on the program s expenditures is estimated at 8 49 the program has been relatively more effective among male headed larger and asset poor households as well as those taking up noncrop high value enterprises and living further away from financial services all weather roads and markets or located in the eastern and northern regions policy implications of the results are drawn

incentives work getting teachers to come to school we use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in india in treatment schools teachers attendance was monitored daily using cameras and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group and the children s test scores increased by 0 17 standard deviations we estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers respond strongly to financial incentives our model is used to compute cost minimizing compensation policies jel i21 j31 j45 o15

some empirical evidence on embedding effects in contingent valuation of forest protection abstract we test for an embedding effect on a geographically distributed public good and the extent to which improvements in the cvm design reduce the occurrence and magnitude of embedding effects in valuation using both open ended and dichotomous choice cvm for protection of forests in all of southeastern australia and two smaller portions of that area we find the occurrence of embedding effects in only one of the two levels when embedding effects were present there was a reduction in value much smaller than that found by kahneman and knetsch

the political economy of government responsiveness theory and evidence from india the determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy here we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems having a more informed an politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governments to be responsive this suggests that there is a role both for democratic institutions and the mass media in ensuring that the preferences of citizens are reflected in policy the ideas behind the model are tested on panel data from india we show that public food distribution and calamity relief expenditure are greater controlling for shocks where governments face greater electoral accountability and where newspaper circulation is highest

does greater accountability improve the quality of public service delivery evidence from uganda summary it is now widely realized that in many developing countries the low quality of public services and governance can limit the scope for poverty reduction and growth empirical micro level evidence on the scope for improved accountability to help reduce corruption and improve the quality with which critical public services are provided is however limited using a large data set from uganda to address this issue we find that household knowledge on how to report inappropriate behavior by bureaucrats and unsatisfactory quality of services does help to not only reduce the incidence of corruption but is also associated with significant improvements in service quality

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

dry promotions and community participation evidence from a natural field experiment in brazilian fishing villages abstract this paper investigates the role of dry promotions for community participation in eight brazilian fishing villages we randomly promoted some fishermen to assistants before the start of an environmental program increasing their responsibilities but not providing any monetary compensation thereafter we study whether they engage more in conservation behavior during this program the data shows that promoted fishermen provide substantially more effort which suggests that such promotions may be a cost effective tool to stimulate cooperation and community participation

balancing rural poverty reduction and citizen participation the contradictions of uganda s decentralization program abstract uganda s ambitious decentralization program is analyzed in terms of a dual mode system of local governance under a technocratic mode conditional funding from the center is earmarked for particular programs but with little local participation in contrast the patronage mode is an elaborate system for local bottom up planning but with limited resources which are largely consumed in administrative costs and political emoluments along with the spoils of a committee system controlling contracts and appointments these resources provide the means for building political alliances and loyalty in the absence of a culture of transparency and civic engagement to assure downward accountability it remains to be seen whether decentralization can promote both efficient service delivery and local empowerment simultaneously

market failures of market coupling and counter trading in europe an illustrative model based discussion the horizontal integration of the energy market and the organization of transmission services remain two open issues in the restructured european electricity sector the coupling of the french belgian and dutch electricity markets the trilateral market in november 2006 was a real success the extension of the system to germany in november 2010 also proceeded smoothly and the intent is to continue with the same market architecture but market coupling is based on a zonal system which has often failed in meshed grids this may cast doubts on what will happen in the future when electricity demand picks up again and wind develops the nodal system has generally been more successful than zonal architectures but its implementation is not currently foreseen in the eu this paper analyzes versions of market coupling that differ by the organization of counter trading while underplayed in current discussions counter trading could become a key element of market coupling as its geographic coverage expands and wind penetrates we simplify matters by assuming away strategic behavior between the energy and counter trading markets and conduct the analysis on a stylized six node example taken from the literature we simulate market coupling for different assumptions of zonal decomposition and coordination of transmission system operators tsos we show that these assumptions matter even in the absence of strategic behavior market coupling can be quite vulnerable to the particular situation on hand countertrading can work well or completely fail and it is not clear beforehand what will prevail our analysis relies on standard economic notions such as social welfare and generalized nash equilibrium but the use of these notions is probably novel the nodal organization is the reference first best scenario different zonal decompositions and degrees of coordination are then studied with respect to this first best solution

the role of economics in global management of whales re forming or re founding iwc abstract the global management of whale species identified as an economic mixed good is addressed by means of economic theory of bargaining and institution making i will analyse i why it is important to take into account explicitly both consumptive use and non use values within international conventions on global mixed goods ii the role and nature of institutions dealing with global issues iii the role of bargaining between conflicting interests as a focal feature of the institution making process and iv the role of economic thinking in international conventions co operative and non co operative solutions are discussed and instruments aimed at achieving co operative bargaining analysed the study has both positive and normative implications with insights on social welfare enhancing institutional reforms although the study is broad yet special focus is given to the international whaling commission iwc this paper concludes that we should make economic theory operational within the realm of global institutions on the basis of the bargaining model the conclusion is that iwc should necessarily be re founded or at least re formed changing the convention from whaling to a whale it is suggested that the possibility of introducing compensatory side payments into the bargaining arena in order to increase social welfare and enforceability with respect to a ban scenario be investigated ethical implications of monetary compensations are considered in parallel with economic efficiency the limits and potentialities of economics and economic instruments are also tested globally with respect to the whale and other environmental issues

seeing is believing evidence from an extension network experiment extension is designed to enable lab to farm technology diffusion decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers and from extension agents to contact farmers cfs cfs should then train other farmers in their communities such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues the authors run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the cf model with a direct cf training on the diffusion of a new technology all villages have cfs and access the same extension network in treatment villages cfs additionally receive a three day central training on the new technology they track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network from extension agents to cfs and from cfs to other farmers directly training cfs leads to a large statistically significant increase in adoption among cfs however higher levels of cf adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers

report cards the impact of providing school and child test scores on educational markets this paper studies study the impact of providing school and child test scores on subsequent test scores prices and enrollment in markets with multiple public and private providers a randomly selected half of the sample villages markets received report cards this increased test scores by 0 11 standard deviations decreased private school fees by 17 percent and increased primary enrollment by 4 5 percent heterogeneity in the treatment impact by initial school quality is consistent with canonical models of asymmetric information information provision facilitates better comparisons across providers improves market efficiency and raises child welfare through higher test scores higher enrollment and lower fees

power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled power to the people evidence from a randomized field experiment on community based monitoring in uganda intervention started in 2004 and consisted of a training and a six month follow up in uganda the study observed that localized nongovernmental organizations encouraged communities to be more involved with the state of health service provision and strengthened their capacity to hold their local health providers to account for performance the community based monitoring project increased the quality and quantity of primary health care provision the program led to a significant increase in the weight of infants by 14 z scores and a significant decrease in child mortality by 33 utilization of outpatient services was significantly higher 20 percent in the treatment group and the overall effect across utilization measures is large and significant funding for the study derived from bank netherlands partnership program world bank research committee world bank africa region division swedish international development agency department for research cooperation

paradoxes of decentralization water reform and social implications in mexico summary decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of mexico s neoliberal reform strategy we analyze decentralization based on urban rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources and to examine its development implications we assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient sustainable and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas we find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains for agricultural water management irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under mexico s transference strategy but did not result in greater equity efficiency or sustainability of water use we argue that decentralization in the mexican water sector is context specific and marked by limited benefits privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non state institutions the creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability transparency equity and sustainability

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

possible adverse effects of increasing block water tariffs in developing countries ture in which a commodity is priced at a low initial rate up to a specified volume of use block then at a higher or several increasingly higher rates for additional blocks used the ordinary household municipal water bill in developing countries is often calculated on some sort of ibt structure and donor organizations and consultants continue to recommend this practice for town and city water systems the majority of world bank sponsored water tariff studies conducted since 1970 for example have recommended the use of increasing block water tariffs there are two commonly accepted justifications for using ibts the first based on a rationale of equity is that ibts should assist low income households and ensure an equitable allocation of the costs of water production and distribution the argument in this case is that low income households use less water than high income households because they have fewer water using appliances and are less likely to have large lawns and gardens an ibt results in higher marginal prices to the customer and thus higher average prices for higher income households the price of water in the initial block may be set very low usually at a subsidized rate to ensure that the poor are not discouraged from using the amount of water considered essential for human needs typically estimated at 25 50 liters per capita per day the price of water in the initial block is thus sometimes termed the lifeline rate the second justification for ibt structures is that the higher prices charged beyond the initial block discourage extravagant water use and promote water conservation both these justifications for ibts assume that each household has

local capture evidence from a central government transfer program in uganda according to official statistics 20 percent of uganda s total public expenditure was spent on education in the mid 1990s most of it on primary education one of the large public programs was a capitation grant to cover schools nonwage expenditures using panel data from a unique survey of primary schools we assess the extent to which the grant actually reached the intended end user schools the survey data reveal that during 1991 1995 the schools on average received only 13 percent of the grants most schools received nothing the bulk of the school grant was captured by local officials and politicians the data also reveal considerable variation in grants received across schools suggesting that rather than being passive recipients of flows from the government schools use their bargaining power to secure greater shares of funding we find that schools in better off communities managed to claim a higher share of their entitlements as a result actual education spending in contrast to budget allocations is regressive similar surveys in other african countries confirm that uganda is not a special case

rural livelihoods and poverty reduction strategies in four african countries this paper compares and contrasts rural livelihoods in uganda kenya tanzania and malawi with a view to informing rural poverty reduction policies within poverty reduction strategy plans prsps low household incomes in rural areas of all countries are associated with low land and livestock holdings high reliance on food crop agriculture and low monetisation of the rural economy these adverse factors are in some instances made more difficult by land sub division at inheritance declining civil security in rural areas deteriorating access to proper agronomic advice and inputs and predatory taxation by decentralised district councils better off households are distinguished by virtuous spirals of accumulation typically involving diverse livestock ownership engagement in non farm self employment and diversity of on farm and non farm income sources lessons for prsps centre on the creation of a facilitating rather than blocking public sector environment for the multiplication of non farm enterprises seeking creative solutions to the spread of technical advice to farmers and examining critically the necessity for and impact of tax revenue collection by district councils on rural incomes and enterprise

decentralisation and government provision of public goods the public health sector in uganda while many developing countries have devolved health care responsibilities to local governments in recent years no study has examined whether decentralisation actually leads to greater health sector allocative efficiency this paper approaches this question by modeling local government budgeting decisions under decentralisation the model leads to conclusions not all favourable to decentralisation and produces several testable hypotheses concerning local government spending choices for a brief empirical test of the model we look at data from uganda the data are of a type seldom available to researchers actual local government budgets for the health sector in a developing country the health budgets are disaggregated into specific types of activities based on a subjective characterisation of each activity s publicness the empirical results provide preliminary evidence that local government health planners are allocating declining proportions of their budgets to public goods activities

blending top down federalism with bottom up engagement to reduce inequality in ethiopia donors increasingly fund interventions to counteract inequality in developing countries where they fear it can foment instability and undermine nation building efforts to succeed aid relies on the principle of upward accountability to donors but federalism shifts the accountability of subnational officials downward to regional and local voters what happens when aid agencies fund anti inequality programs in federal countries does federalism undermine aid does aid undermine federalism or can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal system resolve the contradiction internally this study explores this paradox via the promotion of basic services program in ethiopia the largest donor financed investment program in the world using an original panel database comprising the universe of ethiopian woredas districts the study finds that horizontal geographic inequality decreased substantially donor financed block grants to woredas increased the availability of primary education and health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that vertical inequality across wealth groups within woredas also declined implying that individuals from the poorest households benefit disproportionately from increasing access to and utilization of such services the evidence suggests that by combining strong upward accountability over public investment with extensive citizen engagement on local issues ethiopia s federal system resolves the instrumental dissonance posed by aid funded programs to combat inequality in a federation

a critical assessment of transaction cost theory and governance of public services with special reference to water and sanitation this is a pre copyedited author produced version of an article accepted for publication in cambridge journal of economics following peer review the version of record hulya dagdeviren and simon a robertson a critical assessment of transaction cost theory and governance of public services with special reference to water and sanitation cambridge journal of economics vol 40 6 1707 1724 january 2016 is available online at https doi org 10 1093 cje bev079

fighting corruption to improve schooling evidence from a newspaper campaign in uganda what are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning we argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption we illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experiment a newspaper campaign in uganda aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools parents with information to monitor local officials handling of a large education grant program the campaign was highly successful and the reduction in capture had a positive effect on enrollment and student learning jel d73 i22 o12

integrated value theory for natural areas abstract value assessment is a necessary component of any rational decision making process concerning the use or management of natural areas this paper describes an integrated value theory for identifying measuring and aggregating human values for natural areas to ensure philosophical coherence the framework makes a commitment to a specific theory of end values three related levels of end value are identified which give meaning to the values expressed by humans the theory addresses the three rational modes of human value expression weakly comparable noncompensatory and exchange exchange value expressions are consistent with neoclassical economic notions of value the other types of value expression are not current techniques for aggregating values include multicriteria analysis and benefit cost analysis multicriteria analysis can encompass the three modes of value expression but does not readily discriminate between them and so fails to take advantage of the full information content of noncompensatory and exchange preferences benefit cost analysis on the other hand assumes a particular structure of values which means it should be limited to assessment of exchange preferences the framework outlined in this paper provides an advance on both of these methods in that it combines the specificity of benefit cost analysis with the breadth of multicriteria analysis

hybrid pricing in a coupled european power market with more wind power abstract in the european electricity market the promotion of wind power leads to more network congestion zonal pricing market coupling which does not take the physical characteristics of transmission into account is the most commonly used method to relieve network congestion in europe however zonal pricing fails to provide adequate locational price signals regarding scarcity of energy and thus creates a large amount of unscheduled cross border flows originating from wind generated power in this paper we investigate the effects of applying a hybrid congestion management model i e a nodal pricing model for one country embedded in a zonal pricing system for the rest of the market we find that compared to full nodal pricing hybrid pricing fails to fully utilize all the resources in the network and some wrong price signals might be given however hybrid pricing still outperforms zonal pricing the results from the study cases show that within the area applying nodal pricing better price signals are given the need for re dispatching is reduced more congestion rent is collected domestically and the unit cost of power is reduced

right target wrong mechanism agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in uganda summary household consumption surveys suggest that the downward trend in rural poverty indicators recorded in uganda during the 1990s has been reversed since 2000 this paper examines the ugandan government s strategy to reduce rural poverty the plan for modernization of agriculture pma it argues that while there appear few better choices of target for the pma than to improve incomes of the rural poor through increased agricultural productivity emphasis on decentralization as a mechanism for poverty reduction is misplaced in the current political context of uganda the paper considers what alternative mechanisms might better deliver reductions in rural poverty

making reform work institutions dispositions and the improving health of bangladesh we examine whether local governance can improve social development empirically using good and bad cases of public health outcomes in bangladesh we explore the institutional underpinnings of service provision digging down beneath the rules of the game to analyze the beliefs understandings and dispositions that drive social behavior changes in deep social attitudes led to improvements in social indicators regional variation in health outcomes is explained by the presence or absence of a dense web of relationships that enmeshed reformers in local systems of authority and legitimacy strengthening their actions and making local society more susceptible to change

the world bank of the future even in today s world of burgeoning private capital markets there is much that an organization like the world bank can contribute toward realizing the dream of a world without poverty first of course there is emergency relief at any point of time there are people in the world who are in the middle of an acute crisis and need emergency relief while delivering relief effectively is not easy there is broad agreement that it is a worthwhile goal however the world bank believes rightly that this is not enough as we see it there are at least three important ways it can contribute to the broader project

save the poor shoot some bankers bilateral or multilateral organizations control about 90 of official overseas development assistance oda much of which is wasted this note traces aid failure to the daisy chain of principal agent beneficiary relationships linking rich donors to aid bureaucrats to poor recipients waste results when aid middlemen un intentionally misdirect oda waste can be reduced by clarifying domestic goals for oda using fewer middlemen with greater intrinsic motivation empowering recipients and or replacing bureaucracy with markets

legalizing bribe giving i introduction corruption remains an endemic problem in the developing world and has become a central political issue in many countries empirical work has considerably advanced our understanding of how widespread corruption is and how it can cause harm 1 governments and agencies such as the world bank have sponsored numerous anticorruption programs however regarding how to best fight corruption in practice research has lagged behind policy 2 recently kaushik basu chief economist then of the indian government and now of the world bank proposed a specific approach in basu s 2011 pamphlet why for a class of bribes the act of giving a bribe should be treated as legal he describes a society where bribery is rampant a scourge that deserves to be banished and proposes for the case of harassment bribes that people pay to get services they are legally entitled to 3 the following policy legalize bribe giving double the fine for bribe taking and make the bribe taker pay back the bribe if discovered when a citizen bribes a bureaucrat under traditional law the two become partners in crime they thus lack incentives to report the activity under basu s policy bp which he deems fairly radical incentives are provided for the bribe giver to report the bribe taker if this is foreseen the bureaucrat would not accept the bribe in the first place that is the key idea will it work a hot debate has raged in indian and international press the economist appeared sympathetic 4 however in some quarters the proposal stirred outrage and commentators discarded it mainly on moral grounds 5 more tempered thoughtful criticism has come from economists dreze 2011 in particular wrote a penetrating comment arguing that basu does not give adequate attention to some institutional and moral concerns which may change conclusions basu s intriguing presentation is informal as is the heated debate it inspired perhaps one should not expect the issues to be easily settled through such discourse the proposal is reminiscent of somewhat analogous tools used in other fields such as leniency policies in antitrust and whistleblower protection and reward schemes against fraud and organized crime scholars who studied those measures have suggested they may be effective if well designed and administered but counterproductive if details are not set right 6 deeper understanding of the pros and cons of subtle legal rules may require careful scrutiny within a formal model in section ii we develop a simple formal model to represent the scenarios basu and his commentators care about as explicit games by comparing equilibria we draw conclusions regarding the conditions under which bp is likely to be effective bp gets mixed context dependent grades and we highlight complementarities with other policies the proposal works best if coupled with measures that increase the costs for bureaucrats of denying citizens what they deserve and that reduce the costs for citizens of getting justice verifying whether a bribe was paid entails costs which may deter reporting hence bp works better against larger bribes inefficient or corrupt law enforcement increases these costs so bp will be more effective if it is part of a wider reform package that also fosters independence and accountability of the legal system in section iii we take into account also the legal and moral considerations brought up by dreze revealing other problems related to bp we propose a modified policy mbp that escapes many objections the idea is inspired by leniency rules in antitrust rather than legalize bribe giving only those who report having paid a bribe would be awarded legal immunity extortionary harassment bribes are distortive when they are not paid because a justified and presumably welfare enhancing licence is then not issued with other arguably often more serious forms of corruption distortions occur when bribes are paid not otherwise

wealth health and health services in rural rajasthan what are the determinants of health and of well being income and wealth are clearly part of the story but does access to health care have a large independent effect as the advocates of more investment in health care such as the world health organization s commission on macroeconomics and health commission on macroeconomics and health 2001 have argued this paper reports on a recent survey in a poor rural area of the state of rajasthan in india intended to shed some light on this issue where there was an attempt to use a set of interlocking surveys to collect data on health and economic status as well as the public and private provision of health care

causes and consequences of lexicographic choices in stated choice studies abstract stated choice sc methods and other choice experiments are now becoming increasingly popular for the valuation of environmental goods this paper shows that lexicographic choices lcs in an sc task or other types of choice experiments do not imply that the respondent has lexicographic preferences lcs may be a result of i study designs where differences between the alternatives are too great and ii simplification of the choice task a traditional approach that investigates motives for lexicographic choices mainly as a result of lexicographic preferences may therefore fail to reveal the whole motive range study designs that cause lcs whether such choices actually are based on non compensatory choices i e genuine lexicographic preferences or strategic behaviour or compensatory choices provide less information about preferences however providing they are not totally dominant such choices are not normally a serious modeling problem it is argued that simplification is a consequence of respondents differing abilities to choose such lcs contribute to the larger variances of sc data relative to less cognitively demanding valuation methods and might therefore have a significant impact on the implied valuation of non market goods if they are not handled in the analysis in data collection we should use survey designs that collect more signals and less noise and in data analysis we should use models that can separate signals from noise however there is obviously a limit to the amount of noise which can be separated from signals in a model and therefore how much noise such models can tolerate and still produce useful valuation estimates for the goods under consideration for further investigation of such limits a direct test procedure that can investigate whether each respondent has completed the task in a compensatory manner like the one presented in the current study is valuable

aid growth and devolution summary this paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness the decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness since local decision makers are better informed about local needs thereby decentralization may also have reverse effects e g through coordination problems excessive regulation administrative costs and local capture we use panel data for up to 60 countries and find that aid contributes to economic growth in centralized developing economies whereas it is less effective or even harmful in decentralized countries the cases of indonesia the philippines and uganda support our findings our results imply that donor countries should carefully consider how the two development instruments foreign aid and decentralization interact

the politics of staying poor exploring the political space for poverty reduction in uganda summary despite claims that uganda s recent success in poverty reduction has been significantly related to getting the politics right there are concerns that the poorest may not have benefited from this form of poverty reduction or the types of politics that have helped shape it employing the analytical framework of political space reveals that although some of the poorest groups are represented within the political system political discourse reveals a strong bias toward the economically active leaving the poorest excluded from poverty programs significantly there is an increasing divergence between the regime s political project of modernization and the international poverty agenda with important implications for the poorest

measuring the existence value of wildlife what do cvm estimates really show two research programs are brought together to contribute to the growing body of work on alternatives to standard welfare based approaches to environmental valuation and policy the first is the theoretical literature undermining the new welfare

the politics of public services a service characteristics approach summary politics is widely regarded as affecting and being affected by the performance of public services yet little research differentiates between services in exploring these effects the article addresses this gap by proposing a framework for understanding and comparing the politics of different services it identifies how the nature of the good type of market failure tasks involved in delivery and demand for a service hitherto regarded largely as economic and managerial concerns affect political commitment organizational control and user power policy responses can be targeted to address service characteristics where they present opportunities or constraints to better services

school governance teacher incentives and pupil teacher ratios experimental evidence from kenyan primary schools this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled school governance teacher incentives and pupil teacher ratios experimental evidence from kenyan primary schools conducted between 2005 and 2006 in kenya the study observed the impact of a program under which kenyan parent teacher associations ptas at randomly selected schools were funded to hire an additional teacher on a renewable contract outside normal ministry of education civil service channels at one quarter normal compensation levels on the student teacher and school level despite a dramatic reduction in class size the program generated little improvement for students who remained in the standard system civil service teachers were 13 points less likely to be found in class teaching if their school received funding to hire a contract teacher the program increased test scores by 28 percent of a standard deviation for those students assigned to pta contract teachers there is strong evidence that locally hired and monitored teachers had better incentives they were 15 percent more likely to be in class teaching during unannounced spot checks the school based management program had significant positive impacts on the tendency for civil service teachers to cut effort in response to introduction of a contract teacher funding for the study derived from the world bank government of netherlands

does feedback matter evidence from agricultural services abstract we design a field experiment to test whether eliciting feedback can affect demand for a service we randomly assign different feedback tools in the context of an agricultural service and track their impact on farmers demand we find large demand effects in the current and following agricultural seasons these demand effects spill over as non client farmers in the vicinity of treated groups are more likely to sign up announcing monitoring to trainers across treatment and control communities has little effect on trainers effort we conclude that increasing farmers control over the quality and content leads their higher demand for the service