The power of information : evidence from a newspaper campaign to reduce capture

By R. Reinikka, Jakob Svensson. 2004

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The authors exploit an unusual policy experiment to evaluate the effects of increased public access to information as a tool to reduce capture and corruption of public funds. In the late 1990s, the Ugandan government initiated a newspaper campaign to boost schools' and parents' ability to monitor local officials' handling of a large school-grant program. The results were striking: capture was reduced from 80 percent in 1995 to less than 20 percent in 2001. The authors use distance to the nearest newspaper outlet as an instrument for exposure to the campaign. Proximity to a newspaper outlet is positively correlated with the head teachers' knowledge about rules governing the grant program and the timing of releases of funds from the center, but uncorrelated with test scores of general ability. A strong (reduced-form) relationship exists between proximity to a newspaper outlet and reduction in capture of school funds since the newspaper campaign started. This pattern contrasts sharply with the outcomes in the five-year period prior to the campaign. Instrumenting for head teachers' knowledge about the grant program, the authors find that public access to information is a powerful deterrent to capture at the local level.

Subfields: Education, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9b46e64e244340b52dee1e59341c1ad9c93edf07

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. D. Stasavage
2. Olivier Armantier
3. A. Boly
4. Jakob Svensson
5. T. Yamano
6. R. Reinikka
7. K. Deininger
8. Paul Mpuga

In Safety Research

1. Jakob Svensson
2. D. Stasavage
3. R. Reinikka
4. Olivier Armantier
5. A. Boly
6. T. Yamano
7. K. Deininger
8. Paul Mpuga

In Sociology and Political Science

1. D. Stasavage
2. Olivier Armantier
3. A. Boly
4. T. Yamano
5. K. Deininger
6. Jakob Svensson
7. Paul Mpuga
8. R. Reinikka

Citations in the corpus

• A controlled field experiment on corruption (2011, methodology): “5Some empirical studies have been conducted with data obtained after natural experiments (see e.g. Di Tella and Schargrodsky 2003, or Reinikka and Svensson 2004).”
• Does Greater Accountability Improve the Quality of Public Service Delivery? Evidence from Uganda (2005, background): “At the same time, there is some evidence suggesting that, in the case of education, greater transparency can make a significant contribution to reducing corruption and embezzlement (Reinikka & Svensson, 2003).”
• No Taxation Without Information: Deterrence and Self-Enforcement in the Value Added Tax (2015, unknown): “[29] Reinikka, Ritva, and Jakob Svensson.”
• Reassessing Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (2005, background): “Few studies have evaluated the governance argument, but studies by Ablo and Reinikka (2000), Reinikka and Svensson (2003), and Das and others (2003) suggest that large differences can exist between executed program budgets and the amount that actually reaches beneficiaries. 9. When households can ac”
• Transparenting Transparency: Intial Empirics and Policy Applications (2005, unknown): “Evidence from micro studies such as Reinikka and Svensson (2003) shows the importance of public access to information in reducing corruption In the late 1990s, the Ugandan government initiated a newspaper campaign to boost schools’ and parents’ ability to monitor officials’ handling of a large schoo”
• The role of democracy in Uganda's move to universal primary education (2005, background): “But, as a result of several policy changes, and in particular a central government decision to publish full details of grants in newspapers, by 2001 local schools were receiving 80% (see Reinikka & Svensson 2003, 2004).”
• Jobs for Shared Prosperity: Time for Action in the Middle East and North Africa (2013, background): “The demand for greater inclusion can also be satisfi ed by helping citizens monitor the delivery of local services and in this way improve service providers’ performance (Reinikka and Svensson 2004).”
• The institutional economics of foreign aid (2006, unknown): “In Reinikka and Svensson (2005a), we use a repeat PETS to assess the effects of the newspaper campaign.”
• Democracy and education spending in Africa (2005, background): “This variation may be due to factors that cannot be adequately captured using existing cross-country data, such as the relative salience of ethnic and regional divisions, or other features of the democratic process involving availability of information (Reinikka and Svensson 2004).”
• Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda (2006, background): “The ‘power of knowledge’ has been highlighted in a wide array of contexts such as the allocation of public funds (Reinikka and Svensson 2003), the quality and effectiveness of public service delivery (Deininger and Mpuga 2005), and policies for natural resource management (Pender et al. 2004).”