Search

We exploit new experimental and quasi-experimental data to investigate voters' intrinsic motivation to engage politically. Does having the right to vote increase engagement or, given significant incentives to free ride, do eligible voters remain rationally unengaged? Does knowledge that ones group is pivotal reduce free riding? And are the politically engaged influenced by election-relevant policy information in the run-up to a major election? To address these questions, we fielded an original survey of 5,400 Mexican high school seniors just prior to the historic 2018 general election. Age-based regression discontinuity results show that the just-eligible score higher on measures of low-cost political engagement compared to the just-ineligible. A first survey experiment reveals that information that the youth vote will be pivotal increases the eligible respondents' interest in the presidential debate and in the election result. In the second experiment, information about current policy outcomes affects future policy priorities in ways consistent with the incentives of eligible respondents to collect relevant information on salient policy issues.

Theory suggests that employee trust is key to productivity in organizations, but empirical evidence documenting links between trust and constraints on performance is scarce. This paper analyzes self-collected data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries and finds that individual-level trust is relevant to three types of performance factors. First, high-trust employees are more willing to collaborate and share information with coworkers and are more supportive of technological innovation. Second, high-trust respondents have different perceptions of organizational constraints: they are less concerned with low staff quality or lack of discretion to innovate, and more concerned with staff shortages. Third, trust in coworkers is associated with stronger mission motivation. Instrumental variable strategies based on the transmission of trust through social and professional channels account for potential sources of endogeneity. A survey experiment on preferences for social distancing policies provides further evidence that trust enhances mission motivation: employee policy preferences align better with the implied government policy when their trust in the public sector is higher.

The increase in access to digital technologies is opening up opportunities for governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to offer digital public services. However, there is scarce evidence regarding the benefits and costs of potential projects which makes it difficult for governments in the region to prioritize digital projects for implementation. As part of the report titled “Digitalizing Public Services: Opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean,” produced by the Inter-American Development Bank (Cristia and Vlaicu, 2022), a set of cost-benefit analyses of the digital public services were performed. The present document complements the mentioned report by presenting the methodology, assumptions, and results of these cost-benefit analyses. To increase the comparability of the results across digital public services evaluated, common assumptions and a standardized methodology were used. Moreover, contextual conditions were fixed across projects by estimating results for a base country, Peru. The robustness of the results were examined by replicating the analysis for Chile, El Salvador, and Jamaica. Digital public services were evaluated in three sectors: education, health and government administrative services (e.g. production of identity cards). For each sector, the benefits and costs of two digital projects were estimated. For some these digital projects, only one policy option was assessed but, in other cases, several policy options were analyzed. A total of 11 policy options were assessed as part of this exercise. Results indicate that, in general, the policy options analyzed produced positive net present values. However, there is wide variation in the net present value across policy options suggesting that governments should carefully evaluate which digital public services they should prioritize for implementation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up digital transformation and brought within reach the possibility of dramatic improvements in public services for millions across Latin America and the Caribbean. There is large variation in value added between different technology-based projects, and governments should leverage the available evidence to prioritize project designs that yield the greatest possible social value. This report seeks to serve as a source of inspiration, offering clear and concrete examples of easily implementable interventions in education, health, transactional services, and fiscal management with the potential to help build more inclusive and developed societies.

A new survey of 6,040 voting-age individuals conducted in seven Latin American metropolitan areas reveals that political and interpersonal mistrust, risk aversion and time impatience are strong predictors of voter preferences for public spending. Respondents with higher mistrust or impatience are more likely to choose transfers over public goods; more impatient respondents are also more likely to choose current spending over public investment. Randomized experiments providing information about the benefits of public investment have the expected average demand impacts. Respondents with high political mistrust or impatience increase their demand for public investment significantly less than others.