A classical motivation for using information provided by the local community to target social benefits in developing countries is that community members may have more current, dynamic welfare information about others than a centralized program implementer. However, there is little direct evidence supporting this claim, which mostly relies on correlations between community-provided information and survey-collected welfare metrics. To understand what information community members have and use in targeting, we conduct lab-in-the-field experiments and community meeting exercises with 300 families in Purworejo, Central Java. Participants individually ranked other community members based on specific welfare benchmarks (consumption, neediness, and assets) and also completed targeting tasks. This seminar will discuss the findings from these experiments and community meeting exercises.

The paper is co-authored with Yudistira Hendra Permana (FEB UGM) and Gumilang Aryo Sahadewo (FEB UGM)

Speaker: Carly Trachtman (University of California, Berkeley)

Thursday, 17 February 2022 at 10.00-11.30 WIB

Participate on Zoom (registration required): bit.ly/fkp17feb
or YouTube bit.ly/fkp-live

Thumbnail photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash