The fiscal cost of weak governance: Evidence from teacher absence in India.

The relative return to strategies that augment inputs versus those that reduce inefficiencies remains a key open question for education policy in low-income countries. Using a new nationally-representative panel dataset of schools across 1297 villages in India, we show that the large public investments in education over the past decade have led to substantial improvements in input-based measures of school quality, but only a modest reduction in inefficiency as measured by teacher absence. In our data, 23.

Quality and Accountability in Health Care Delivery: Audit-Study Evidence from Primary Care in India.

We present unique audit-study evidence on health care quality in rural India, and find that most private providers lacked medical qualifications, but completed more checklist items than public providers and recommended correct treatments equally often. Among doctors with public and private practices, all quality metrics were higher in their private clinics. Market prices are positively correlated with checklist completion and correct treatment, but also with unnecessary treatments.

Socioeconomic Status And Quality Of Care In Rural India: New Evidence From Provider And Household Surveys.

To assess socioeconomic differences in access to high-quality health care services, we collected novel data on illnesses that required primary care from 23,275 households in 100 villages in Madhya Pradesh, India. We matched the primary care visits for those illnesses to characteristics of the health care providers that members of the households visited. People in the average village in our sample could access eleven providers, of whom 71 percent were in the private sector and 49 percent had no formal medical training.