When:
Thursday, November 10, 2022
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM CT
Where: Kellogg Global Hub, 1410, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students
Contact:
Kayla Johnson
Group: Department of Economics: Seminar in Development Economics
Category: Academic
Lakshmi Iyer (Notre Dame): "The Importance of Being Local: Administrative Decentralization and Human Development" with Latika Chaudhary
Abstract: We examine the human development consequences of transferring responsibility for public service provision to local governments in India, using state-level variation in the timing of administrative decentralization reforms. We find that devolution of the responsibility for health functions from state to local governments, without concomitant authority over personnel or taxation, results in a worsening of neonatal, infant and under-5 child mortality. States that conducted such partial devolution exhibit worse indicators of public health provision, as well as lower rates of primary school completion. Our results cannot be attributed to differential pre-trends, omitted variables bias, or heterogeneous treatment effects.