Public Investment Choices by Local and Central Governments
研究了在选举控制有限的情况下，将公共资源分配权下放给地方政府的影响，利用埃塞俄比亚农村的自然实验发现分权改善了中央优先的农业服务，但对公民优先的饮用水服务无影响。
Abstract This paper examines the impacts of devolving authority for public resource allocation to local governments in a setting of limited electoral control. Such a setting differs from that assumed by seminal formal models of devolution, but describes many developing countries. This study presents a formal model of this setting and tests it using unique data from a natural experiment in rural Ethiopia whereby half of the country's regions were decentralized but not the other half. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity design, this article shows that decentralization strongly improved delivery of agricultural public services, which are of high priority to the central government. In contrast, it did not impact drinking water services, on which the central government places lower priority but citizens place high priority.