You Get What You Pay for? Can Certification Programs Contribute to Local State Capacity Strengthening?

• In Event: This Land is Your Land: State Capacity and Distributive Politics

Brief Overview

We study the effects of a Mexican federal program designed to incentivize municipal governments to increase state capacity. Our diff-in-diff estimates indicate that state capacity outcomes improve, but also find evidence of political manipulation.

Authors

• Soeren Jannik Henn, University of Chicago

• Horacio Larreguy, Harvard University

• John Marshall, Columbia University in the City of New York