performed in the following manner: in each of the 40 LGAs, 3 wards were selected<sup>11</sup> and then one enumeration area (based on the census) was sampled in each ward. All households living in that enumeration area were listed and 25 were randomly selected to be interviewed, for a total of 3,000 households. Around 80% of those were tracked in the follow-up survey and re-interviewed. For those not found, a new household was interviewed as a replacement.<sup>12</sup> The Government Officials panel dataset includes 948 observations - 474 individuals in each of the waves. In the first round, the following 12 government officials were targeted to be interviewed in each LGA: Mayor/Council Chairperson; Council Director; Council Internal Auditor; Council Economist; Council Human Resources officer; 3 Elected Ward Councilors; and 3 Ward Executive Officers. Government officials were assured their answers would be kept confidential, and in 95% of cases the respondent was alone for the entire interview. At the second survey, over 70% of officials still worked at the same LGAs and were re-interviewed even if working in a new position. For the remaining officials, the interview was conducted with the individual currently occupying the position of the respondent in the initial survey.<sup>13</sup> For most of these officials, PO-RALG oversees all decisions related to appointments, transfer, promotions, etc. As PO-RALG also implemented the project and commissioned the survey, this could create some bias in government officials’ responses. However, this potential bias would affect both treatment and comparison groups.

For both households’ and government officials’ surveys, our main difference-in-differences specification compares average changes in outcomes in project vs. non- project respondents, pooling together respondents that participated in both waves and replacements for those who could not be tracked. Our main estimates, in other words, treat the panel dataset as two separate cross-sectional surveys.<sup>14</sup>

# **3.3 Outcomes of interest and aggregate indices**

As discussed above, the survey includes indicators of institutional capacity among officials and citizens in several dimensions that can be directly related to the five core systems targeted by the project: the urban planning system, the fiduciary or financial management system; infrastructure management; accountability and oversight by citizens; and the local property tax system. Accordingly, we structured the outcomes of interest, in both the household and government official surveys, in those five areas.

> 11Wards were selected in a manner that permits a balanced distribution between areas that received infrastructure projects and area that did not. Specifically, the ward in which the LGA headquarters is based was always selected and then one ward with a recent infrastructure project and one without a recent infrastructure project were randomly sampled. No sampling weights were included in the analysis as our ward sampling strategy should produce a sample representative of the LGA level.

> 12Attrition of original households was higher in ULGSP LGAs: 20% of households were replaced in those regions vs. 15% in control LGAs.

> 13The share of officials still holding the same position at endline was not statistically different between ULGSP and control areas (67% in ULGSP vs. 62% in control LGAs)

> 14Restricting the sample to only those households/officials that were interviewed in both surveys and estimating a fixed-effects panel model does not significantly change the results.

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