Stuti Khemani
Biographic Data
| ID | 1105387 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stuti Khemani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stuti |
| FAMILY NAME | Khemani |
| SIGNATURE | KHEMANI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | World Bank Group |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Media's Influence on Citizen Demand for Public Goods
Low voter interest in politicians who promise public goods is common in clientelist settings and a challenge to development. We show that access to media can increase interest. Households in Benin, responding to novel survey vignettes, generally support politicians who offer government jobs for a few at the expense of health and education for all. However, some households have exogenously greater access to community radio, which broadcasts progra…
The importance of political selection for bureaucratic effectiveness
Bureaucratic effectiveness has come to the fore in research as necessary for economic growth and development. This paper contributes empirical evidence to understand the building blocks of bureaucracy by gathering rich survey data in a typical institutional environment of the developing world. The data reveal a robust correlation between the selection of local politicians and bureaucratic effectiveness. In districts in Uganda where locally electe…
An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of Covid-19
Legitimacy in the time of COVID-19 can be understood as the ability of leaders to win compliance with new public health orders because people share a widespread belief that everyone is complying. This perspective, building on the logic of game theory, which can help explain strategic interactions among large numbers of people in a society or polity, yields a powerful insight: that governments in developing countries, as the first line of defense …
Clientelism and identity
Electoral clientelism or vote buying has been regarded as undermining democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of the state towards its citizens, especially the poor. Social identity as a form of political mobilisation may contribute to this, enabling support to be won with clientelist transfers. This paper reports data from a novel laboratory experiment designed to examine whether clientelism can be sustained as a political strat…
The Government Response to Informed Citizens
We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to community radio increased their demand for those benefits. Households with greater access to community radio were more likely to pay for government-provided…
Making Politics Work for Development
Too often, even reform leaders in countries fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. They are encumbered by adverse political incentives, running the risk of losing office should they try to do the right thing. When technically sound policies are selected on paper, implementation through the public system can run into perverse norms of behavior among public officials and citizens to ext…
Buying votes versus supplying public services
Radio's Impact on Preferences for Patronage Benefits
Citizens in developing countries support politicians who provide patronage or clientelist benefits, such as government jobs and gifts at the time of elections. Can access to mass media that broadcasts public interest messages shift citizens' preferences for such benefits? This paper examines the impact of community radio on responses to novel survey vignettes that make an explicit trade-off between political promises of jobs for a few versus publ…
Mass media and public education
Do Informed Citizens Receive More…or Pay More? the Impact of Radio on the Government Distribution of Public Health Benefits
The government provision of free or \n subsidized bed nets to combat malaria in Benin allows the \n identification of new channels through which mass media \n affect public policy outcomes. Prior research has concluded \n that governments provide greater private benefits to \n better-informed individuals. This paper shows, for the first \n time, that governments can also respond by exploiting \n informed individuals' greater willingness to pay fo…
Mass media and public services
Does radio access improve public service provision? And if so, does it do so by increasing government accountability to citizens, or by persuading households to take advantage of publicly-provided services? Prior research has argued that citizens with greater access to mass media receive greater benefits from targeted government welfare programs, but has not addressed these questions for public services such as in education and health. Using uniq…
Political economy of infrastructure spending in India
This paper examines a puzzle in the \n political economy of infrastructure in India -- the \n co-existence of relatively low shares of capital spending in \n public budgets alongside evidence of large demand for \n village infrastructure from poor voters. It argues that this \n pattern is due to infrastructure projects being used at the \n margin for political rent-seeking, while spending on \n employment and welfare transfers are the preferred v…
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs
Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their quality. We conducted a randomized evaluation of three interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation to India: providing information on existing institutions, training community members in a testing tool for children, and training volunteers to hold remedial reading camps. These interventions had no impact on community in…
Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
Education policy has recently focused on improving accountability and incentives of public providers for actual learning outcomes, often with school-based reward programmes for high performers. The Learning Guarantee Programme in Karnataka, India, is prominent among such efforts, providing cash transfers to government schools that achieve learning at specified high levels. This study examines whether schools that self-selected into the incentive …
When Do Legislators Pass on Pork? The Role of Political Parties in Determining Legislator Effort
A central challenge in political economy is to identify the conditions under which legislators seek to "bring home the pork" to constituents. We conduct the first systematic analysis of one determinant of constituency service, voter attachment to political parties, holding constant electoral and political institutions. Our analysis takes advantage of data from a unique type of public spending program that is proliferating across developing countr…
Commentaire sur l'article de Michael Walton
Une approche anthropologique offre de nouvelles perspectives car elle ne propose pas d’interpréter les actions humaines, mais de les décrire pour comprendre les éléments en jeu dans l’action collective. Alors la distinction entre analyse positive et normative opérée par Michael Walton est dépassée. Ainsi, les actions individuelles peuvent paraître irrationnelles ou contre-productives ; elles font sens pour l’anthropologue, dont la discipline est …
Party Politics and Fiscal Discipline in a Federation
Theoretical and empirical analysis suggests that federations are prone to fiscal indiscipline, because of intergovernmental bargaining over the allocation of national resources. What role do political parties play in mediating this bargain? If the national government is dominated by a single political party, does the party discipline those states where its affiliates are in power? If the national government consists of a coalition of political pa…
Does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference? Evidence from intergovernmental transfers in India
Political cycles in a developing economy
When Do Legislators Pass on Pork? The Role of Political Parties in Determining Legislator Effort
A central challenge in political economy is to identify the conditions under which legislators seek to "bring home the pork" to constituents. We conduct the first systematic analysis of one determinant of constituency service, voter attachment to political parties, holding constant electoral and political institutions. Our analysis takes advantage of data from a unique type of public spending program that is proliferating across developing countr…
Political cycles in a developing economy
Buying votes versus supplying public services
Does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference? Evidence from intergovernmental transfers in India
Party Politics and Fiscal Discipline in a Federation
Theoretical and empirical analysis suggests that federations are prone to fiscal indiscipline, because of intergovernmental bargaining over the allocation of national resources. What role do political parties play in mediating this bargain? If the national government is dominated by a single political party, does the party discipline those states where its affiliates are in power? If the national government consists of a coalition of political pa…
Mass media and public education
Media's Influence on Citizen Demand for Public Goods
Low voter interest in politicians who promise public goods is common in clientelist settings and a challenge to development. We show that access to media can increase interest. Households in Benin, responding to novel survey vignettes, generally support politicians who offer government jobs for a few at the expense of health and education for all. However, some households have exogenously greater access to community radio, which broadcasts progra…
The importance of political selection for bureaucratic effectiveness
Bureaucratic effectiveness has come to the fore in research as necessary for economic growth and development. This paper contributes empirical evidence to understand the building blocks of bureaucracy by gathering rich survey data in a typical institutional environment of the developing world. The data reveal a robust correlation between the selection of local politicians and bureaucratic effectiveness. In districts in Uganda where locally electe…
Political cycles in a developing economy
Does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference? Evidence from intergovernmental transfers in India
Party Politics and Fiscal Discipline in a Federation
Theoretical and empirical analysis suggests that federations are prone to fiscal indiscipline, because of intergovernmental bargaining over the allocation of national resources. What role do political parties play in mediating this bargain? If the national government is dominated by a single political party, does the party discipline those states where its affiliates are in power? If the national government consists of a coalition of political pa…
Commentaire sur l'article de Michael Walton
Une approche anthropologique offre de nouvelles perspectives car elle ne propose pas d’interpréter les actions humaines, mais de les décrire pour comprendre les éléments en jeu dans l’action collective. Alors la distinction entre analyse positive et normative opérée par Michael Walton est dépassée. Ainsi, les actions individuelles peuvent paraître irrationnelles ou contre-productives ; elles font sens pour l’anthropologue, dont la discipline est …
Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
Education policy has recently focused on improving accountability and incentives of public providers for actual learning outcomes, often with school-based reward programmes for high performers. The Learning Guarantee Programme in Karnataka, India, is prominent among such efforts, providing cash transfers to government schools that achieve learning at specified high levels. This study examines whether schools that self-selected into the incentive …
When Do Legislators Pass on Pork? The Role of Political Parties in Determining Legislator Effort
A central challenge in political economy is to identify the conditions under which legislators seek to "bring home the pork" to constituents. We conduct the first systematic analysis of one determinant of constituency service, voter attachment to political parties, holding constant electoral and political institutions. Our analysis takes advantage of data from a unique type of public spending program that is proliferating across developing countr…
Political economy of infrastructure spending in India
This paper examines a puzzle in the \n political economy of infrastructure in India -- the \n co-existence of relatively low shares of capital spending in \n public budgets alongside evidence of large demand for \n village infrastructure from poor voters. It argues that this \n pattern is due to infrastructure projects being used at the \n margin for political rent-seeking, while spending on \n employment and welfare transfers are the preferred v…
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs
Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their quality. We conducted a randomized evaluation of three interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation to India: providing information on existing institutions, training community members in a testing tool for children, and training volunteers to hold remedial reading camps. These interventions had no impact on community in…
Mass media and public services
Does radio access improve public service provision? And if so, does it do so by increasing government accountability to citizens, or by persuading households to take advantage of publicly-provided services? Prior research has argued that citizens with greater access to mass media receive greater benefits from targeted government welfare programs, but has not addressed these questions for public services such as in education and health. Using uniq…
Do Informed Citizens Receive More…or Pay More? the Impact of Radio on the Government Distribution of Public Health Benefits
The government provision of free or \n subsidized bed nets to combat malaria in Benin allows the \n identification of new channels through which mass media \n affect public policy outcomes. Prior research has concluded \n that governments provide greater private benefits to \n better-informed individuals. This paper shows, for the first \n time, that governments can also respond by exploiting \n informed individuals' greater willingness to pay fo…
Radio's Impact on Preferences for Patronage Benefits
Citizens in developing countries support politicians who provide patronage or clientelist benefits, such as government jobs and gifts at the time of elections. Can access to mass media that broadcasts public interest messages shift citizens' preferences for such benefits? This paper examines the impact of community radio on responses to novel survey vignettes that make an explicit trade-off between political promises of jobs for a few versus publ…
Mass media and public education
Buying votes versus supplying public services
The Government Response to Informed Citizens
We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to community radio increased their demand for those benefits. Households with greater access to community radio were more likely to pay for government-provided…
Making Politics Work for Development
Too often, even reform leaders in countries fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. They are encumbered by adverse political incentives, running the risk of losing office should they try to do the right thing. When technically sound policies are selected on paper, implementation through the public system can run into perverse norms of behavior among public officials and citizens to ext…
An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of Covid-19
Legitimacy in the time of COVID-19 can be understood as the ability of leaders to win compliance with new public health orders because people share a widespread belief that everyone is complying. This perspective, building on the logic of game theory, which can help explain strategic interactions among large numbers of people in a society or polity, yields a powerful insight: that governments in developing countries, as the first line of defense …
Clientelism and identity
Electoral clientelism or vote buying has been regarded as undermining democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of the state towards its citizens, especially the poor. Social identity as a form of political mobilisation may contribute to this, enabling support to be won with clientelist transfers. This paper reports data from a novel laboratory experiment designed to examine whether clientelism can be sustained as a political strat…
The importance of political selection for bureaucratic effectiveness
Bureaucratic effectiveness has come to the fore in research as necessary for economic growth and development. This paper contributes empirical evidence to understand the building blocks of bureaucracy by gathering rich survey data in a typical institutional environment of the developing world. The data reveal a robust correlation between the selection of local politicians and bureaucratic effectiveness. In districts in Uganda where locally electe…
Media's Influence on Citizen Demand for Public Goods
Low voter interest in politicians who promise public goods is common in clientelist settings and a challenge to development. We show that access to media can increase interest. Households in Benin, responding to novel survey vignettes, generally support politicians who offer government jobs for a few at the expense of health and education for all. However, some households have exogenously greater access to community radio, which broadcasts progra…
Political science (18 works) · Economics (14 works) · Politics (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Media Influence and Politics (7 works) · Public economics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Government (linguistics) (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Market economy (5 works)