really more informed about corruption in the project, or if they had any means of in‡uencing outcomes, in response to the intervention. Given these constraints, it is not surprising that Olken (2005) only ...nds minor e¤ects of the intervention.

Using a randomized design, Banerjee, Deaton and Du‡o (2004) evaluate a project in Rajasthan in India where a member of the community was paid to check once a week, on unannounced days, whether the auxiliary nurse-midwife assigned to the health center was present at the center. Unlike Olken’s study, getting reliable information is not a concern here. In fact, external monitors con...rmed the absence rates documented by the community members assigned to the project. The issue is rather how the informed community member could use his or her information on absenteeism to invoke community participation. The intervention had no impact on attendance. Thus, informing one person, even if this is done is a structured and regular way, may not have much impact.

Jiminez and Sawada (1999) examine how decentralizing educational responsibility to communities and schools a¤ects student outcomes. They study El Salvador’s Community-Managed Schools Program, EDUCO, and its e¤ect on students’achievement on standardized tests and attendance. The evidence suggests that enhanced community and parental involvement in EDUCO schools improved students’language skills and diminished student absences. A key estimation issue in this paper is endogenous program participation and although the authors instrument for program participation by using the proportion of EDUCO schools in a municipality, it is not obvious that they succeed in obtaining the causal treatment e¤ect.

There is a growing empirical literature on the relationship between information dissemination (through the media) and accountability. With few exceptions, this literature studies the relationships of accountability of politicians to citizens and deal with one (periodic elections), out of several, mechanism through which citizens can make politicians and policymakers accountable.<sup>6</sup> For example, Strömberg (2003, 2004) considers how the press in‡uences redistributive programs in a model of electoral policies, where the role of the media is to raise voter awareness, thereby increasing the sensitivity of turnout to favors granted. Besley and Burgess (2002) focus on the media’s role in increasing political accountability also in a model of electoral policies. Ferraz and Finan (2005) study the e¤ects of making information about corruption in the local governments public on the probability of the incumbent winning the election. Our work di¤ers in several important dimensions. First, we focus on mechanisms through which citizens can make providers, rather than politicians, accountable. Thus, we do not study the design or allocation of public resources across communities or programs, but rather on how these resources are utilized. Second, we use micro data from households and health stations rather than disaggregated national accounts data. Finally, we identify impact using an experimental design. The source of identi...cation will thus come directly from a randomized experiment.

Reinikka and Svensson (2005a) also study the relationship between information, accountability, and outcomes at the provider level. They exploit a newspaper cam-

> 6For a review, see Khemani (2006).

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