Stephan Litschig

Intergovernmental Transfers and Elementary Education: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Brazil

Whether providing additional resources to local communities leads to improved public services and better outcomes more generally, given existing management capacity and incentive and accountability structures, is an unresolved yet important question for public policy. This paper uses a regression-discontinuity design to evaluate the effect of unrestricted fiscal transfers on local spending (including on education), schooling and learning in Brazil. Results show that transfers increase local public spending almost one for one with no evidence of crowding out own revenue or other revenue sources. Extra per capita transfers of 1000 Reais lead to about 0.42 additional years of elementary schooling and student literacy rates increase by about 5.6 percentage points on average. Part of this effect arises through higher teacher-student ratios in municipal elementary school systems. Results also suggest that additional resources have stronger effects in more rural and less developed parts of Brazil.

Adapting the Supply of Education to the Needs of Girls: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Rural India

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a large-scale government initiative (NPEGEL/KGBV) that provided earmarked funds for addressing girls’ special needs to public schools in rural India. Our empirical strategy exploits local variation in program eligibility around a threshold based on the female literacy rate at the community level. The main result is that the program led to an enrollment gain of about six to seven percentage points for girls in upper primary school. Evidence of an enrollment gain for boys is tentative. Available evidence on mechanisms suggests that the program improved girl-friendly school infrastructure and services as well as gender-neutral school resources.

Rules vs. Political Discretion: Evidence from Constitutionally Guaranteed Transfers to Local Governments in Brazil

Can rules be used to shield public resources from political interference? The Brazilian constitution and national tax code stipulate that revenue sharing transfers to municipal governments be determined by the size of counties in terms of estimated population. In this paper I document that the population estimates which went into the transfer allocation formula for the year 1991 were manipulated, resulting in significant transfer differentials over the entire 1990s. I test whether conditional on county characteristics that might account for the manipulation, center-local party alignment, party popularity and the extent of interparty fragmentation at the county level are correlated with estimated populations in 1991. Results suggest that revenue sharing transfers were targeted at right-wing national deputies in electorally fragmented counties as well as aligned local executives.

Saving Lives: Evidence from a Conditional Food Supplementation Program

This paper evaluates the impact of a conditional food supplementation program on child mortality in Ecuador. The program (PANN 2000) was implemented by regular staff at local public health posts and consisted of offering free micronutrient-fortified food for children aged 6–24 months in exchange for routine health checkups. Our regression discontinuity design exploits the fact that the program was initially running only in the poorest communities of certain provinces. We find that its presence reduced child mortality in cohorts with eight months of differential exposure from a level of about 2.5 percent by 1 to 1.5 percentage points.