Governing the Commons? Water and Power in Pakistan’s Indus Basin Hanan G. Jacoby, Ghazala Mansuri Abstract Surface irrigation is a common pool resource characterized by asymmetric appropriation opportunities across upstream and downstream water users. Large canal systems are also predominantly state-managed. We study water allocation under an irrigation bureaucracy subject to corruption and rent-seeking. Data […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 557, December 2018
Social Proximity and Bureaucrat Performance: Evidence from India Guo Xu, Marianne Bertrand, Robin Burgess Abstract Using exogenous variation in social proximity generated by an allocation rule, we find that bureaucrats assigned to their home states are perceived to be more corrupt and less able to withstand illegitimate political pressure. Despite this, we observe that home […]