Essays in Development Economics and Governance

Abstract

Good governance plays an important role in facilitating economic development and promot- ing human welfare. This dissertation examines topics at the intersection of development economics and governance through a series of field experiments carried out in South Asia. In Chapter 1, I examine barriers to take-up of an unconditional cash transfer program provided by the government for poor widows in Delhi, India and measure the distributive implications of these barriers. To do this, I conduct a randomized controlled trial with eligible women, providing some with only information about the program and others with information plus varying degrees of application assistance. In Chapter 2, I follow-up with the women in the study from Chapter 1 to measure the impact of expanding access to this unconditional cash transfer on economic and psychological measures of well-being as well as levels of political engagement. In Chapter 3, my co-authors and I aim to understand whether information constraints of voters help explain the election of candidates facing criminal charges to public office in India. To this end, we run a large-scale, mobile-based voter information campaign around the Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections of 2017.