Pascaline Dupas

General seminars
amse seminar

Pascaline Dupas

Stanford University
Decentralization and efficiency of subsidy targeting: Evidence from chiefs in rural Malawi
Joint with
Pia Basurto, Jonathan Robinson
Venue

VC Cinéma le Miroir

Centre de la Vieille-Charité - Cinéma le Miroir

Centre de la Vieille Charité
2 rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille

Date(s)
Monday, March 14 2016| 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Contact(s)

Michel Lubrano: michel.lubrano[at]univ-amu.fr
Antonin Macé: antonin.mace[at]gmail.com

Abstract

A substantial share of the national budget in developing countries goes towards subsidies for the needy. The two most common methods to identify beneficiaries are a rule-based allocation relying on a proxy-means test (PMT) or a decentralized allocation in which a local leader selects beneficiaries. A decentralized allocation may offer informational or accountability advantages, but may be prone to elite capture. We study this tradeoff in the context of two large-scale subsidy programs (one for agricultural inputs and one for food) in Malawi, both of which were decentralized to traditional leaders or “chiefs”. We find that chiefs are more likely to channel subsidies to kin, but that chiefs target needy households (as proxied by consumption) nearly as well as (or, not much worse than) even a perfectly respected PMT. What's more, results from a model-based test are consistent with chiefs taking into consideration productive efficiency when identifying beneficiaries for input subsidies. Thus some of the poverty-mistargeting of input subsidies could be welfare improving, since income pooling at the village level appears common.

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