Leadership and Sustainability of Community Based Development Projects

The proposed research aims to provide novel, causal evidence of how leader electoral rules and the types of leaders selected affect the quality of policy outcomes. In two related randomized field experiments, we will study the impact of electoral rules on leaders and the effect on leader types on the provision of a specific service: a system for personal savings and loans. In collaboration with the Ugandan branch of BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, we randomized leader selection procedures across community groups whose objective it is to make savings and loans possible for vulnerable members of communities in Uganda.