Can governments improve aid programs by providing information to beneficiaries? In our model, information can change how much aid citizens receive as they bargain with local officials who implement national programs. In a large-scale field experiment, we test whether mailing cards with program information to beneficiaries increases their subsidy from a subsidized rice program. Beneficiaries rec…
Should government service delivery be outsourced to the private sector? If so, how? We conduct the first randomized field experiment on these issues, spread across 572 Indonesian localities. We show that allowing for outsourcing the last mile of a subsidized food delivery program reduced operating costs without sacrificing quality. However, prices paid by citizens were lower only where we exoge…