IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unl/novafr/wp2303.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public service delivery, exclusion and externalities: theory and experimental evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Armand
  • Britta Augsburg
  • Antonella Bancalari
  • Maitreesh Ghatak

Abstract

This study explores the interaction between the quality of public services, the implementation of user fees, and the resulting potential for exclusion, that can lead to negative externalities. Our theoretical framework takes account of the possible externalities that result from excluded users accessing alternative options in the context of sanitation, i.e., open defecation, and challenges the conventional wisdom that higher quality unequivocally leads to increased use. Instead, it highlights the ambiguity that results from a simultaneous increase in usage due to improved services (quality effect) and a decrease caused by the fees (price-elasticity effect). We then provide empirical evidence from a randomized controlled trial, where we incentivized the quality of water and sanitation services in the two largest cities of Uttar Pradesh, India. We show that higher service quality increases fee compliance but excludes some users, leading to unintended negative health externalities. Our detailed data provides evidence that results are driven by changes in caretaker behaviour. This finding highlights the need to be cautious regarding user fees, especially for public services involving significant externalities, and in settings where the users are very poor

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Armand & Britta Augsburg & Antonella Bancalari & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2023. "Public service delivery, exclusion and externalities: theory and experimental evidence from India," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2303, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
  • Handle: RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2303
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://novafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2303.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2011. "Inference on Treatment Effects After Selection Amongst High-Dimensional Controls," Papers 1201.0224, arXiv.org, revised May 2012.
    2. Victor Chernozhukov & Mert Demirer & Esther Duflo & Ivan Fernandez-Val, 2017. "Generic machine learning inference on heterogenous treatment effects in randomized experiments," CeMMAP working papers CWP61/17, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    3. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2013. "Supplementary Appendix for "Inference on Treatment Effects After Selection Amongst High-Dimensional Controls"," Papers 1305.6099, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2013.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Alex Armand & Britta Augsburg & Antonella Bancalari, 2021. "Coordination and the poor maintenance trap: an experiment on public infrastructure in India," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2110, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    2. Alex Armand & Britta Augsburg & Antonella Bancalari & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2023. "Public service delivery, exclusion and externalities: Theory and experimental evidence from India," IFS Working Papers W23/37, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    3. Chakravorty, Bhaskar & Arulampalam, Wiji & Bhatiya, Apurav Yash & Imbert, Clément & Rathelot, Roland, 2024. "Can information about jobs improve the effectiveness of vocational training? Experimental evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    4. Ian W. McKeague & Min Qian, 2015. "An Adaptive Resampling Test for Detecting the Presence of Significant Predictors," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 110(512), pages 1422-1433, December.
    5. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov, 2015. "Comment," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 110(512), pages 1449-1451, December.
    6. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 29-50, Spring.
    7. David Cheng & Abhishek Chakrabortty & Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan & Tianxi Cai, 2020. "Estimating average treatment effects with a double‐index propensity score," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 767-777, September.
    8. Strittmatter, Anthony & Wunsch, Conny, 2021. "The Gender Pay Gap Revisited with Big Data: Do Methodological Choices Matter?," Working papers 2021/05, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    9. Michael J. Weir & Thomas W. Sproul, 2019. "Identifying Drivers of Genetically Modified Seafood Demand: Evidence from a Choice Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-21, July.
    10. Clarke, Damian, 2023. "The Economics of Abortion Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 16395, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Chakravorty, Bhaskar & Bhatiya, Apurav Yash & Imbert, Clément & Lohnert, Maximilian & Panda, Poonam & Rathelot, Roland, 2023. "Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on India’s rural youth: Evidence from a panel survey and an experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    12. Bütikofer, Aline & Ginja, Rita & Landaud, Fanny & Løken, Katrine V., 2020. "School Selectivity, Peers, and Mental Health," Working Papers in Economics 5/20, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    13. Helmut Wasserbacher & Martin Spindler, 2024. "Credit Ratings: Heterogeneous Effect on Capital Structure," Papers 2406.18936, arXiv.org.
    14. Michael C. Knaus & Michael Lechner & Anthony Strittmatter, 2022. "Heterogeneous Employment Effects of Job Search Programs: A Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(2), pages 597-636.
    15. González, Felipe & Muñoz, Pablo & Prem, Mounu, 2021. "Lost in transition? The persistence of dictatorship mayors," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    16. Chen, Ya & Tsionas, Mike G. & Zelenyuk, Valentin, 2021. "LASSO+DEA for small and big wide data," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    17. D’Amour, Alexander & Ding, Peng & Feller, Avi & Lei, Lihua & Sekhon, Jasjeet, 2021. "Overlap in observational studies with high-dimensional covariates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 221(2), pages 644-654.
    18. Do Nascimento Miguel, Jérémy, 2024. "Returns to quality in rural agricultural markets: Evidence from wheat markets in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    19. Joseph Antonelli & Matthew Cefalu & Nathan Palmer & Denis Agniel, 2018. "Doubly robust matching estimators for high dimensional confounding adjustment," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 1171-1179, December.
    20. John A. List & Ian Muir & Gregory Sun, 2024. "Using machine learning for efficient flexible regression adjustment in economic experiments," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(1), pages 2-40, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public service; Exclusion; Externality; Maintenance; User fees; Payment; Water and sanitation; Health;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    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:unl:novafr:wp2303. 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: Susana Lopes (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feunlpt.html .

    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.