Public Disclosure and Efficiency in Paraguay

Last registered on July 26, 2022

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Public Disclosure and Efficiency in Paraguay

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0009787

Initial registration date

July 21, 2022

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

July 26, 2022, 1:13 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Paraguay

Region

Latin America

Primary Investigator

Name

Antonia Vazquez

Affiliation

University of Texas at Austin

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Martin Rossi

PI Affiliation

Universidad de San Andres

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Juan Cruz Vieyra

PI Affiliation

InterAmerican Development Bank

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2018-05-01

End date

2022-08-31

Keywords

Governance

Additional Keywords

governance, digital innovation, efficiency, investment projects, monitoring, transparency

JEL code(s)

D73, O31, H50, H83, L78, O54

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We study the effect of increasing grassroots monitoring on the evolution of public investment projects. Specifically, we study the impact of the launching of the website MapaInversiones in Paraguay on the percentage of physical progress and number of queries 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 is available to the public. This decreases 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. 2022. "Public Disclosure and Efficiency in Paraguay." AEA RCT Registry. July 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9787-1.1

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

In 2018 Paraguay’s 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 June 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 was 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

2018-06-22

Intervention End Date

2022-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Physical progress, project’s status, and queries about the projects (Citizens’ participation)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

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.
Project’s status is if the project was concluded or not.
Citizens' participation is the accumulated inquiries that people do about all the projects between June 2018 and November 2019.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

In May 2018, using the list of 317 projects we randomly select 210 proyects that should upload the information of all its projects to the website MapaInversiones in June 2018. The randomization was performed using the Stata random number generator after stratification by status of the project (ongoing, approved, or under study). A total of 210 projects were assigned to be upload to the platform and 107 projects were assigned to the control group.
The administrative data of the projects is going to be provided by Paraguay’s government at the end of August 2022. There are 307 public investment projects that belongs to 13 sectors.
We have data of five pre-treatment characteristics and two outcomes. The pre-treatment characteristics are approved budget, financial progress, project status in May 2018, economic sector, and agency. The approved budget is the budget the project has assigned in May 2018. The outcomes are physical progress and citizens’ participation.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

The randomization was performed using the Stata random number generator after stratification by the status of the project (ongoing, approved, or under study)

Randomization Unit

The randomization unit is the project

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

None

Sample size: planned number of observations

There are 317 public investment projects.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

A total of 210 projects were assigned to be upload to the platform (treatment group) and 107 projects were assigned to upload the information a year after (control group).

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

The minimum detectable effect size for the main outcomes is 0.33. This is considering a mean equal to 1 for the control group, a power of 0.8, and a significance level of 0.05

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB