Public economics

Finance

Physics

Accounting

Business

Transfer payment

Public finance

Accountability

Government (linguistics)

Corporate governance

Biology

Welfare

Fell

Macroeconomics

Philosophy

Payment

Political science

Paleontology

Economics

Leakage (economics)

Scale (ratio)

Public expenditure

Workfare

Linguistics

Quantum mechanics

Market economy

American Economic Journal Applied Economics

Can e-governance reforms improve government policy? By making information available on a real-time basis, information technologies may reduce the theft of public funds. We analyze a large field experiment and the nationwide scale-up of a reform to India’s workfare program. Advance payments were replaced by “ just-in-time” payments, triggered by e-invoicing, making it easier to detect misreporting. Leakages went down: program expenditures dropped by 24 percent, while employment slightly increased; there were fewer fake households in the official database; and program officials’ personal wealth fell by 10 percent. However, payment delays increased. The nationwide scale-up resulted in a persistent 19 percent reduction in program expenditure. (JEL C93, D72, I38, O15, O17)

E-governance, Accountability, and Leakage in Public Programs: Experimental Evidence from a Financial Management Reform in India