the cost incurred by public officials and citizens when monitoring the use of royalties. The main finding is that after the release of Mapa-Regalías, public investment projects financed with royalties showed an average increase in efficiency of execution of 7.996 percentage points.T his paper analyzes the impact of Mapa-Regalías on efficiency in the execution of public investment projects in Colombia. MapaRegalías is an online platform that displays geo-referenced information and data on royalties coming from the extractives sector. The purpose of the platform is to reduce

We provide experimental evidence on the effect of peer pressure on individual behavior. Specifically, we study the effect of being exposed to an observer in a public restroom on handwashing and urinal flushing behavior. Our estimates show that being exposed to an observer increases the probability of handwashing by 13 percentage points and the probability of urinal flushing by 15 percentage points. Given that handwashing and urinal flushing have social benefits that exceed individual benefits, our findings provide support for peer pressure as an additional way of addressing the social suboptimality arising from externalities. (JEL C91, C93)

We exploit the random assignment of Brazilian municipalities to an audit programme to explore the link between audits and government hiring practices. We find that audited municipalities employ less labour to provide a given level of public services, and change the way in which they screen their employeesrelying less on discretion and more on merit. Given that audits reduce corruption in the activities under scrutiny, our results suggest that different types of corruption can be complements rather than substitutes.

No abstract

No abstract