Where the state is weak, traditional authorities control the local provision of public goods. These leaders come from an older, less educated generation and often rule in an authoritarian and exclusionary fashion. This means the skills of community members may not be leveraged in policymaking. We experimentally evaluate two solutions to this problem in Sierra Leone: one encourages delegation to higher-skill individuals, and a second fosters broader inclusion in decision making. In a real-world infrastructure grants competition, a public nudge to delegate led to better outcomes than the default of chiefly control, whereas attempts to boost participation were largely ineffective.

Self-control problems constitute a potential explanation for the underinvestment in preventive health in low-income countries. Behavioral economics offers a tool to solve such problems: commitment devices. We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of theoretically motivated commitment contracts in increasing preventive doctor visits by hypertensive patients in rural India. Despite achieving high take-up of such contracts in some treatment arms, we find no effects on actual doctor visits or individual health outcomes. A substantial number of individuals pay for commitment but fail to follow through on the doctor visit, losing money without experiencing health benefits. We develop and structurally estimate a prespecified model of consumer behavior under present bias with varying levels of naiveté. The results are consistent with a large share of individuals being partially naive about their own self-control problems: sophisticated enough to demand some commitment but overly optimistic about whether a given level of commitment is sufficiently strong to be effective. The results suggest that commitment devices may in practice be welfare diminishing, at least in some contexts, and serve as a cautionary tale about their role in health care.

Quantitative estimates of the impacts of climate change on economic outcomes are important for public policy. We show that the vast majority of estimates fail to account for well-established uncertainty in future temperature and rainfall changes, leading to potentially misleading projections. We reexamine seven well-cited studies and show that accounting for climate uncertainty leads to a much larger range of projected climate impacts and a greater likelihood of worst-case outcomes, an important policy parameter. Incorporating climate uncertainty into future economic impact assessments will be critical for providing the best possible information on potential impacts.

We study a randomized evaluation of a merit scholarship program in which Kenyan girls who scored well on academic exams had school fees paid and received a grant. Girls showed substantial exam score gains, and teacher attendance improved in program schools. There were positive externalities for girls with low pretest scores, who were unlikely to win a scholarship. We see no evidence for weakened intrinsic motivation. There were heterogeneous program effects. In one of the two districts, there were large exam gains and positive spillovers to boys. In the other, attrition complicates estimation, but we cannot reject the hypothesis of no program effect.

A new stylized fact in development economics is the importance of social capital in promoting economic growth. This paper examines the effect of social capital on industrialization in Indonesia. We analyze a rich set of social capital and social interaction measures, including voluntary associational activity and levels of trust and informal cooperation. The main finding is that initial social capital does not predict subsequent industrial development across 274 Indonesian districts. Though these findings are for only a single nation and may not apply everywhere, they call into question recent claims regarding social capital and economic development.