Having it at hand: how small search frictions impact bureaucratic efficiency

Can small search costs that constrain information acquisition and monitoring across the administrative hierarchy provide a substantive explanation for poor bureaucratic performance in the developing world? In collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Rural Development and two major states, we conducted a field experiment in which a random sample of bureaucrats were given access to an internet- and mobile-based management and monitoring platform for wage payments associated with the world’s largest workfare program. The platform did not make new information available, but lowered costs of accessing information about the status of pending payments and helped identify subordinate employees who needed to take action. Our experiment also randomly varied which level of the administrative hierarchy had e-platform access - senior and/or immediate managers. Overall, we find delays are 29% lower in areas where search costs are reduced for intermediate management alone. Across all treatment arms, areas with above median pre-period delays see delay reductions. While supervisor-only information provision is most impactful, we find evidence that app usage by intermediate supervisors reduces delays, and this usage is higher when senior officials also have e-platform access, suggesting complementarities across the administrative hierarchy are non-trivial. The extent of delay reductions ∗The authors are from Evidence for Policy Design (Dodge and Troyer Moore), Brown University (Neggers), and Harvard University (Pande). We thank Kartikeya Batra for field work and research assistance, and the J-PAL Governance Initiative and Gates Foundation for financial support. 1 achieved through minimal usage of the tool point to important service delivery improvements enabled by technology now widely available in capacity constrained settings.