Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics cordially invites you to join the brown bag seminar `How do community contribution requirements affect local public good provision? Experimental evidence from safe water sources in Bangladesh´ with Anna Tompsett.

Interested in joining the seminar? Please contact site@hhs.se - the Zoom link will be sent to you by email with further instructions!

Anna is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Stockholm University and a Fellow of the Center for Development Economics and Policy at Columbia University, New York. She received her Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Anna focuses primarily on public goods: both on estimating the impacts of public goods on human development, and in understanding the political processes that influence the provision of public goods.

Want to learn more about Anna Tompsett? Visit her website.

Abstract

Community-driven development projects often require communities to contribute collectively towards project costs. We provide the first experimental evaluation of a community contribution requirement for a development intervention, as well as the first experimental comparison between cash and labour contribution requirements of similar nominal value. Imposing a cash contribution requirement greatly decreases program take-up, relative to a contribution waiver, but imposing a labour contribution does not. Program impact is correspondingly lower under the cash contribution requirement than under the labour contribution requirement or the contribution waiver. Higher take-up under the labour contribution requirement appears to be the consequence of the low real value that communities place on their time. Our results suggest that there may be substantial welfare gains to be made by allowing households in poor rural communities to contribute in labour rather than cash.