Improving Last-Mile Service Delivery using Phone-Based Monitoring
Karthik Mohan Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, Sandip Sukhtankar, Jeffrey Weaver · National Bureau of Economic Research · 2018
Improving "last-mile" public-service delivery is a recurring challenge in developing countries.Could the widespread adoption of mobile phones provide a scalable, cost-effective means for improvement?We use a large-scale experiment to evaluate the impact of phone-based monitoring on a program that transferred nearly a billion dollars to 5.7 million Indian farmers.In randomly-selected jurisdictions, officials were informed that program implementation would be measured via calls with beneficiaries.This led to a 7.6% reduction in the number of farmers who did not receive their transfers.The program was highly cost-effective, costing 3.6 cents for each additional dollar delivered.