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The project studies the existing market structures that affect day labourers in Pakistan, focusing on easing search frictions and matching costs.
This project aims to understand how to strengthen state institutions by improving citizen trust and perceptions of state-delivered services, particularly dispute resolution (e.g., criminal and justice-delivery services).
This pilot intervention is designed to improve service delivery and political accountability. The intervention connects legislative representatives and rural voters in on-going two-way communication using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology available through any cell phone.
The project aims to conduct rigorous impact evaluation for two major initiatives designed to address challenges faced on basic legal functions and ensure women’s de facto rights in two key areas: their legal share of inheritance and key rights in marriage.
CERP-based researchers engaged with the Government of Punjab to deploy a methodology for measuring value for money of procured generic goods and developed a web portal named Punjab Online Procurement System (POPS). CERP researchers also designed and evaluated policy interventions to improve performance of procurement officers.
In South Asia, three quarters of ultra-poor households report casual labour as the dominant form of income. In urban areas, short-term construction jobs are found through social connections or by going to a “labour stand”, essentially an intersection where low-skilled labourers wait each morning for employers looking to hire for a day or two. While spot markets like this are generally thought of to be the free-market ideal, these markets appear to be rife with failures including information asymmetries, wage rigidity and large search costs for employees and employers. The presence of these frictions often increases dependence on social relationships.
This project seeks to answer why exactly employers hire workers from their social network, what are the mechanisms at play and, in response to variation in the hiring process, how do workers change their investment in social capital versus productivity?
These questions will be tested through an RCT with a construction firm in Pakistan. Different aspects of the hiring process between contractors and labourers will be varied while observing the resulting effect on hiring patterns by contractors, labourer productivity and laborer investment in their social capital.
2019 – Ongoing
International Growth Center (IGC)
Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)
Productivity, Social and Professional Networks, Market Frictions, Management and Organisations
Principal Investigators:
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In Pakistan, citizens dissatisfied with state services (particularly dispute resolution) tend to shift towards a variety of non-state actors, weakening the ability of state institutions to resolve crimes and improve public safety. This shifting allegiance creates a vicious cycle: as institutions are weakened, citizens turn to alternative non-state actors, encouraging non-state actors to play a more important role in service provision, further undermining state institutions. This project aims to understand how to strengthen state institutions by improving citizen trust and perceptions of state-delivered services, particularly dispute resolution (e.g., criminal and justice-delivery services).
This study builds upon previous research which found that in lab-in-the-field experiments, citizens increase their desired usage of and giving to the state when provided information about judicial improvements.
This phase, however, employs a sampling framework of citizens actively facing the decision to engage with the state (i.e., someone who is experiencing a dispute), and experimentally introduces two types of interventions that provide information on and/or direct exposure to enhanced services for these citizens: an additional complaint hotline and basic advisory services. Positive perceptions of the effectiveness and credibility of these services are first-order necessities in many emerging economies as they are a necessary feature of a functioning state that can promote growth and sustain peace.
2018 – ongoing
JPAL
Punjab Safe Cities Authority, Punjab Police and Sindh Legal Aid
State Institutions, Public Services
Principal Investigators:
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Elections are blunt instruments for rewarding well-performing politicians or for punishing those who fail to perform adequately in office. At the same time, a politician’s ability to respond to voters’ concerns is impeded if he lacks ways to collect information between elections. We test the potential for improving responsiveness and accountability by partnering with politicians to use a cellphone-based technology that allows them to record messages and ask questions in their own voice, and then to send these out to large numbers of voters. Voters in turn can respond to specific questions using their phone’s touch pad. We study if this use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology and the ability to provide feedback improves voters’ sense of efficacy and support for democracy and if markers of electoral accountability are improved.
This pilot intervention is designed to improve service delivery and political accountability. The intervention connects legislative representatives and rural voters in on-going two-way communication using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology available through any cell phone. The intervention is designed to be strategic, and to provide “teeth” to the capacity of legislators to improve valued aspects of service delivery while also offering voters opportunities to voice responses to elected officials.
The idea of the intervention is to provide politicians with the ability to distribute information to their constituents about up-coming service delivery priorities and spending decisions, and to allow constituents to provide real time feedback. This feedback loop allows politicians to learn responsiveness to voter preferences, which they are unable to do without information about what voters prefer. Likewise, this feedback connection allows voters to hold politicians accountable by repeatedly evaluating responsiveness during the legislative term, and then making an informed decision in the next election.
2015 – ongoing
JPAL, IGC
Service Delivery, Voting, Voter Preference
CERP is working on a rigorous impact evaluation of two major initiatives designed to address challenges faced on basic legal functions and ensure women’s de facto rights in two key areas: their legal share of inheritance and key rights in marriage.
Key rights in marriage: A randomised trial of the training of marriage registrars across the province of Punjab will measure the impact evaluation of their training on women’s financial and legal rights which are already available in the marriage contract.
Legal share of inheritance: The land records of Punjab were recently digitised. Using the time lag in the rollout of the newly opened centres of the land database, the project will evaluate the impact of the new system on women inheriting their rightful share of land.
2017- Halted
Principal Investigators:
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In countries such as Pakistan, and in particular the provincial governments, to whom much responsibility for service delivery has been devolved, face growing spending needs and must meet them with limited resources. In this context, it becomes crucial to ensure that the available resources are spent in a cost-effective manner. Arguably one of the most important tasks in this respect is to ensure greater efficiency of public procurement, without which cost-effective service delivery is impossible.
The availability of timely and accurate information on value for money achieved during procurement is central to evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to increase efficiency in public procurement.
To this end, Punjab Online Procurement System has been developed, implemented and adopted across 1200 public offices. It digitises the existing Procurement System and allows for transactions to be evaluated across offices in higher education, agriculture, health, and communication and works controlling for different attributes.
2012 – 2016
Punjab Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), Planning and Development Board Punjab, Finance Department Punjab, Punjab Resource Management Program, Higher Education Department Punjab, Agriculture Department Punjab, Health Department Punjab, Communications and Works Department Punjab, IGC, J-PAL