IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-02146223.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Randomizing the Last Mile: a methodological note on using voucher-based approach to assess the impact of infrastructure projects

Author

Listed:
  • Tanguy Bernard

    (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Maximo Torero

Abstract

This methodological note discusses the potential and limits of using voucher-based experiments to randomly evaluate the micro-level impact of infrastructures on households' well-being. We argue that such methods are policy relevant, statistically robust, and ethically correct. A number of conditions regarding the vouchers' design and level, as well as allocation methods and household sampling, must be taken into account, however. We illustrate the discussion with an ongoing voucher-based impact evaluation of a rural electrification program in Ethiopia.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Tanguy Bernard & Maximo Torero, 2019. "Randomizing the Last Mile: a methodological note on using voucher-based approach to assess the impact of infrastructure projects," Working Papers hal-02146223, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02146223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 69-85, Fall.
    2. Heckman, James J & Lochner, Lance & Taber, Christopher, 1998. "General-Equilibrium Treatment Effects: A Study of Tuition Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 381-386, May.
    3. Taryn Dinkelman, 2011. "The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3078-3108, December.
    4. Antonio Estache & Marianne Fay, 2009. "Current Debates on Infrastructure Policy," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 27762.
    5. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    6. Robert Jensen, 2007. "The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 879-924.
    7. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    8. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 2003. "Does piped water reduce diarrhea for children in rural India?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 153-173, January.
    9. World Bank, 2006. "Infrastructure at the Crossroads : Lessons from 20 Years of World Bank Experience," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7189.
    10. Dimitris Batzilis & Taryn Dinkelman & Emily Oster & Rebecca Thornton & Deric Zanera, 2014. "New Cellular Networks in Malawi: Correlates of Service Rollout and Network Performance," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume III: Modernization and Development, pages 215-245, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Straub, Stephane, 2008. "Infrastructure and growth in developing countries : recent advances and research challenges," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4460, The World Bank.
    12. Sobel, Michael E., 2006. "What Do Randomized Studies of Housing Mobility Demonstrate?: Causal Inference in the Face of Interference," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 1398-1407, December.
    13. Mu, Ren & van de Walle, Dominique, 2007. "Rural roads and poor area development in Vietnam," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4340, The World Bank.
    14. Aparajita Goyal, 2010. "Information, Direct Access to Farmers, and Rural Market Performance in Central India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 22-45, July.
    15. Fay, Marianne & Leipziger, Danny & Wodon, Quentin & Yepes, Tito, 2005. "Achieving child-health-related Millennium Development Goals: The role of infrastructure," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1267-1284, August.
    16. Benjamin A. Olken, 2007. "Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(2), pages 200-249.
    17. Jenny Aker, 2008. "Does Digital Divide or Provide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Niger," Working Papers 154, Center for Global Development.
    18. Jacoby, Hanan C, 2000. "Access to Markets and the Benefits of Rural Roads," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(465), pages 713-737, July.
    19. Joshua Angrist & Alan Krueger, 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments," Working Papers 834, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    20. Guido W. Imbens & Donald B. Rubin, 1997. "Estimating Outcome Distributions for Compliers in Instrumental Variables Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(4), pages 555-574.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tanguy Bernard & Maximo Torero, 2015. "Social Interaction Effects and Connection to Electricity: Experimental Evidence from Rural Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(3), pages 459-484.
    2. Maximiliane SIEVERT & Jorg PETERS, 2017. "The Impact of Rural Electrification Challenges and Ways Forward," Working Paper 2f9349f5-6cb3-424d-9bc2-a, Agence française de développement.
    3. Torero, Maximo, 2014. "The Impact of Rural Electrification," MPRA Paper 61425, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sawada, Yasuyuki, 2015. "The Impacts of Infrastructure in Development: A Selective Survey," ADBI Working Papers 511, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    2. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    3. Wan, Guanghua & Wang, Chen & Zhang, Xun & Zuo, Congming, 2024. "Income inequality effect of public utility infrastructure: Evidence from rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    4. Lex Borghans & Bart H H Golsteyn & Anders Stenberg, 2015. "Does Expert Advice Improve Educational Choice?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-28, December.
    5. Rezki, Jahen F., 2023. "Does the mobile phone affect social development? Evidence from Indonesian villages," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(3).
    6. Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario & Sala, Davide, 2016. "Ethnic diversity and firms' export behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 248-263.
    7. Jenny C. Aker & Marcel Fafchamps, 2015. "Mobile Phone Coverage and Producer Markets: Evidence from West Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 262-292.
    8. Jenny C. Aker, 2010. "Information from Markets Near and Far: Mobile Phones and Agricultural Markets in Niger," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 46-59, July.
    9. Ravallion, Martin, 2008. "Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 59, pages 3787-3846, Elsevier.
    10. Wong, Ho Lun & Wang, Yu & Luo, Renfu & Zhang, Linxiu & Rozelle, Scott, 2017. "Local governance and the quality of local infrastructure: Evidence from village road projects in rural China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 119-132.
    11. Aritri Chakravarty, 2022. "Impact of Information on Technical Efficiency of Agricultural Production in India," BASE University Working Papers 14/2022, BASE University, Bengaluru, India.
    12. Straub, Stephane, 2008. "Infrastructure and growth in developing countries : recent advances and research challenges," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4460, The World Bank.
    13. Florian Flachenecker & Martin Kornejew, 2019. "The causal impact of material productivity on microeconomic competitiveness and environmental performance in the European Union," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 21(1), pages 87-122, January.
    14. Gonzalo Vazquez-Bare, 2020. "Causal Spillover Effects Using Instrumental Variables," Papers 2003.06023, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    15. Vitalis, Kyriacos & Stefanidis, Dimosthenis & Pallis, George & Dikaiakos, Marios & Nicolaou, Nicos & Nicolaides, Christos, 2024. "Quantifying the impact of online social networks on the success of entrepreneurs," OSF Preprints x6vda_v1, Center for Open Science.
    16. Yiming He & Thomas M. Fullerton, 2020. "The economic analysis of instrument variables estimation in dynamic optimal models with an application to the water consumption," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 66(9), pages 413-423.
    17. Giovanni Cerulli, 2014. "ntreatreg: a Stata module for estimation of treatment effects in the presence of neighborhood interactions," United Kingdom Stata Users' Group Meetings 2014 15, Stata Users Group.
    18. Ellis, Jimmy R. & Gershenson, Seth, 2016. "LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success," IZA Discussion Papers 9956, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Kumse, Kaittisak & Suzuki, Nobuhiro & Sato, Takeshi & Demont, Matty, 2021. "The spillover effect of direct competition between marketing cooperatives and private intermediaries: Evidence from the Thai rice value chain," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    20. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz, 2018. "Life Insurance Holdings And Well‐Being Of Surviving Spouses," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 526-538, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02146223. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.