The effect of public disclosure on efficiency

Last registered on January 17, 2020
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The effect of public disclosure on efficiency
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005173
Initial registration date
January 15, 2020

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 17, 2020, 11:15 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Costa Rica
Region
Latin America

Primary Investigator

Name
Antonia Vazquez
Affiliation
University of Texas at Austin
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Juan Cruz Vieyra
PI Affiliation
Inter-American Development Bank
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Martin Rossi
PI Affiliation
Universidad de San Andres
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Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2018-03-01
End date
2019-04-30
Keywords
Governance
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
H1
Secondary IDs
Abstract
We study the effect of increasing community monitoring on the evolution of public investment projects. Specifically, we study the impact of the launching of the website MapaInversiones in Costa Rica on the percentage of budget used and on the physical progress of public investment projects. Mapainversiones is an online platform where government agencies are required to upload information about the public investment projects they are conducting. After the release of the website, all the information about the public investment projects was available to the public. This decreased the cost of monitoring for the citizens, making it easier to check the status of the public investment projects.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Rossi, Martin, Antonia Vazquez and Juan Cruz Vieyra. 2020. "The effect of public disclosure on efficiency." AEA RCT Registry. January 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5173-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
In 2017 the Costa Rica Government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) made an agreement to conduct a large-scale randomize control trial to study if community participation affects the performance of public investment projects. Specifically, in March 2018 the government with the support of the IADB launched a website called MapaInversiones where citizens could see geo-referenced information, make inquiries and check the progress of public investment projects. The idea behind is to reduce the cost citizens must incur to monitor the public investment in the country and to study its effect on the performance of public investment projects.
Intervention Start Date
2018-04-01
Intervention End Date
2019-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Budget used and Physical progress
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The budget used is the proportion of the budget assigned that the agency has used. The physical progress is the sum of the percentage of each stage that has been completed divided by the sum of all stages multiply by 100. We assume all the stages of a projects are equally relevant.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Citizens' participation
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Citizens' participation is the accumulated inquiries that people do about all the projects between April 2018 and October 2019

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
On March 2018, using the list of 57 agencies we randomly select 29 agencies that should upload the information of all its projects to the website MapaInversiones on April 2018. The randomization was performed using the Stata random number generator after stratification by size of the agency. The size of the agencies is big or small. An agency is considered big if its approved budget is in the top 15 percentiles, and small otherwise. A total of 460 projects from 29 agencies were assigned to be upload to the platform and 189 projects from 28 agencies were assigned to the control group.
Experimental Design Details
The administrative data of the projects were provided by MIDEPLAN (Ministerio de Planificacion Nacional y Politica Economica, Costa Rica). There are 649 public investment projects that belongs to 57 agencies.
We have data of two pre-treatment characteristics and two outcomes. The pre-treatment characteristics are time progress and approved budget. Time progress is the proportion of the original estimated time the project has completed till March 2018. It can be greater than 1 because projects can last more time that was expected. The approved budget is the budget the project has assigned on March 2018. The outcomes are budget used and physical progress.
Randomization Method
The randomization was performed using the Stata random number generator after stratification by size of the agency. The size of the agencies is big or small. An agency is considered big if its approved budget is in the top 15 percentiles, and small otherwise.
Randomization Unit
The randomization unit is the agency
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
The number of agencies is 57
Sample size: planned number of observations
The number of projects is 649
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
There are 460 projects from 29 agencies assigned to the treatment group and 189 projects from 28 agencies assigned to the control group
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
No
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
No
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials