Sanctioning regimes and chief quality Evidence from a lab-in-the-field-experiment in Liberia
Eleonora Nillesen , UNU-MERIT
We use laboratory experiments on public goods under various regimes, to investigate how corruption impacts on public goods provision and institutional choice. As a proxy for corruption of local village leaders, we use the share of missing inputs provided by an international NGO to local chiefs prior to a development project. Our participants play several rounds of a standard public goods game with several treatments where the village chief acts as a monitor or has the ability to sanction players. We then ask participants to choose which regime they prefer. We find that villages increase contributions with monitoring and sanctioning regimes, but that these regimes are ineffective in increasing contributions in villages with corrupt chiefs.
About the speaker
Dr. Eleonora Nillesen is a Research Fellow at UNU-MERIT and a Research Affiliate at the International Security and Development Center (ISDC) in Berlin. She studies the relation(s) between violent conflict, institutional change and various micro-economic outcomes for development including child health, agricultural adoption, and employment. Eleonora obtained a PhD in development economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, in June 2010. Before joining UNU-MERIT, Eleonora held research positions at Wageningen University, ETH Zürich and DIW Berlin. Eleonora has published in international peer reviewed journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. Her current work focuses on assessing the effectiveness of aid interventions using field experiments in Liberia, DR Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya and Rwanda.
Venue: Conference room
Date: 24 September 2015
Time: 12:30 - 13:30 CET
