The Marginal Disutility from Corruption in Social Programs: Evidence from Program Administrators and Beneficiaries
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SurveyExperimentPaper (1).pdf
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557.96 KB
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Author(s)
Gaduh, Arya
Hanna, Rema
Olken, Benjamin A.
Date Issued
March 1, 2024
Journal
American Economic Review: Insights
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Gaduh, Arya, Rema Hanna, and Benjamin A. Olken. 2024. "The Marginal Disutility from Corruption in Social Programs: Evidence from Program Administrators and Beneficiaries." American Economic Review: Insights, 6 (1): 105-19.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Concerns about fraud in welfare programs are common arguments worldwide against such programs. We conducted a survey experiment with over 28,000 welfare program administrators and over 19,000 beneficiaries in Indonesia to elicit the “marginal disutility from corruption”—the trade-off between more generous social assistance and losses due to corruption. Merely mentioning corruption reduced perceived program success, equivalent to distributing more than 26 percentage points less aid. However, respondents were not sensitive to the amount of corruption—respondents were willing to trade off $2 of additional losses for an additional $1 distributed to beneficiaries. Program administrators and beneficiaries had similar assessments. (JEL D73, H53, I32, I38, O15, O17).
Subjects
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Geography, Planning and Development
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20230008
