Lecture 2- Power to the People, Bjorkmann and Svensson (2009) Flashcards
Who wrote power to the people and when?
Bjorkmann and Svensson in 2009
What was the main goal of the paper?
To test to see if the community holding health providers to account and monitoring them would lead to an improvement in health outcomes
What does the previous literature say about the impact holding officials to account has on outcomes in society?
Olken (2007) looked at how the community monitoring officials can reduce corruption in Indonesia
How do Bjorkmann and Svensson go beyond previous literature?
Unlike Olken, utilization of health and quality of health services were areas the community monitored in the treatment area, which is easier to measure than corruption.
Also Bjorkmann and Svensson have a high level of participants so pressure is applied from the community as a whole rather than just an individual which would have less effect.
What is the main empirical strategy that was used by Bjorkmann and Svensson?
A randomized field experiment was taken place in 50 communities across 9 districts.
From each group, half the people were randomly assigned to the treatment group, and half to the control.
We are using the GOLD standard, a RCT
What is the main regression
yijd= BTjd+PiXjd + θd +eijd
What does BTjd mean in the regression?
Its a dummy variable for whether that district was in the treatment or control group.
What does yijd mean in the regression?
It is the outcome of household I, in facility j in district d
What does θd mean in the regression?
It’s individual fixed effects that are unique to that district that may cause people to be more likely to monitor their health providers e.g. higher confidence.
What was the main impact from the monitoring?
There was a reduction in child mortality as well as increase in weight gain
