The (Lack of) Distortionary Effects of Proxy-Means Tests: Results from a Nationwide Experiment in Indonesia

Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken and Sudarno Sumarto ()
Additional contact information
Rema Hanna: Harvard Kennedy School

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: Many developing country governments determine eligibility for anti-poverty programs using censuses of household assets. Does this distort subsequent reporting of, or actual purchases of, those assets? We ran a nationwide experiment in Indonesia where, in randomly selected provinces, the government added questions on flat-screen televisions and cell-phone SIM cards to the targeting census administered to 25 million households. In a separate survey six months later, households in treated provinces report fewer televisions, though the effect dissipates thereafter. We find no change in actual television sales, or actual SIM card ownership, suggesting that consumption distortions are likely to be small.

JEL-codes: H31 I38 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1726

Related works:
Working Paper: The (lack of) Distortionary Effects of Proxy-Means Tests: Results from a Nationwide Experiment in Indonesia (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp18-041

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().