Comments by Jesper Roine on paper "Transparency is Power: Identification Cards and Food Subsidy Programs in Indonesia" presented by Rema Hanna at the SITE Corruption Conference, 31 August 2015. Find more at: https://www.hhs.se/site

1. THE POWER OF TRANSPARENCY:
INFORMATION, IDENTIFICATION CARDS AND FOOD SUBSIDY
PROGRAMS IN INDONESIA
SITE Conference on Corruption
1 September, 2015
Comments by
Jesper Roine, SITE, SSE

2. MOTIVATION, APPROACH AND MAIN RESULTS
• Question: How to improve food subsidy program
– Currently eligible households receive only about 1/3 of
the intended subsidy (both quantity and price problem).
• Approach: Model and field experiment
– Model the interaction between the local official
implementing the program and the intended (and
unintended!) beneficiaries.
– Run a field experiment with different ways of increasing
information of the program to see what seems to work.
• Main results:
– Sending cards with info about the program improves the
results. Cards with additional info about price work better
and cards+public info work even better.

3. OVERALL COMMENT
• A great example of applied economics at its best
– Model illustrates the many potential effects that
increased information could have for this seemingly
“simple problem”.
– Field experiment – closely connected to the model –
makes it possible to asses what works and which
mechanisms seem most important.
• Rich model and experiment; comments here are
limited to a few points

4. THE STYLIZED SETTING
Government
(benevolent)
Local official
(”potentially corrupt” but
potentially better informed)
Households
(both eligible and ineligable, with
distributions of beliefs about rights)
”Bargaining”
Information
4 main treatments:
- Quantity of rice
- Quantity and price
- Quantity and public
information
- Cards with coupons
- Also in some villages
info only to a subset
of (poor) eligible
households

5. THE STYLIZED SETTING IN PRACTICE
Government
Local official
Households
”Bargaining”
Bulk of info cards
distributed (or not)
by local officials
Could this explain low
number of cards
distributed and also
the lack of ”coupon-
effect”?
Information
Also, is it really about
information? The card
may work as a ”proof”
of entitlement. (other work
on just info not being enough)

6. RELATION TO ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES
Government
Local official
Households
”Bargaining”
Laundry list of alternatives:
- Change incentives of
official(s)
- Change distribution/
administration of how
food is sold
- Simplify rules
- More predictable, stable
rules
- Increased monitoring
- Better accountability of
leaders/officials
- etc

7. THANKS FOR A GREAT PAPER!