In Light of What They Know: How do Local Leaders Make Targeting Decisions?

Ervin Dervisevic, Seth Aaron Levine Garz, Aneesh Mannava and Elizaveta Perova

No 9465, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper analyzes how local leaders make targeting decisions in the context of a public workfare program in the Lao People~^!!^s Democratic Republic. The study finds that village heads are progressive in their targeting, prioritizing the poorer households in their villages. The study benchmarks this decentralized selection to the common alternative proxy means test method and finds that village heads are at least as progressive as a proxy means test method approach. To illuminate what poverty-related information village heads could plausibly be incorporating into their internal selection decisions, the study designs and administers a set of exercises for village heads to rank villagers on land ownership, access to nutrition, and experience with recent shocks -- indicators that are likely to differ in their observability to village heads and could plausibly be associated with need for public support. The study finds that village heads~^!!^ perceptions, as revealed through the ranking exercise, differ substantially from actual levels reported in surveys of the villagers themselves. The study then uses a data-driven machine learning approach to identify the predictors of village head selection. It concludes that village heads rely on a combination of easily observable household characteristics, forming a holistic impression of household welfare, rather than specific indicators like actual land ownership, nutrition, or economic shocks.

Keywords: Inequality; Nutrition; Urban Governance and Management; Municipal Management and Reform; Urban Housing; Urban Housing and Land Settlements; Services&Transfers to Poor; Economic Assistance; Access of Poor to Social Services; Disability; Roads&Highways (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-sea and nep-ure
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