Data and Code for: Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy and Training

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Abhijit Banerjee, MIT; Esther Duflo, MIT; Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, IIM Calcutta; Daniel Keniston, LSU; Nina Singh, Rajasthan Police

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
CodeFiles			04/16/2020 12:48:PM
DataFiles			04/16/2020 12:50:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	71.8 KB	04/16/2020 08:54:AM
README_v3.pdf	application/pdf	84.2 KB	05/27/2020 03:02:PM

Project Citation:

Banerjee, Abhijit, Duflo, Esther, Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, Keniston, Daniel, and Singh, Nina. Data and Code for: Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy and Training. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-01-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E116807V1

Project Description

Summary: Management matters for firms, but what practices are optimal in hierarchical government organizations? And can skilled managers identify them? A large-scale randomized trial conducted with the police of Rajasthan, India, tested four interventions recommended by senior police officers: limitations of transfers, rotation of duties and days off, increased community involvement, and on-duty training. Field experience motivated a fifth intervention: “decoy” visits by enumerators to register cases, incentivizing staff to improve service. Only training and decoy visits had robust impacts; others were poorly implemented and ineffective. Management reforms can improve policing, but even skilled leaders struggle to identify the optimal interventions.

Funding Sources: Will and Flora Hewlett Foundation; UNODC

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Policing; personnel management; bureaucracy

JEL Classification:
      D02 Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
      D23 Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
      D73 Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
      F63 Economic Impacts of Globalization: Economic Development
      H11 Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
      K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

Geographic Coverage: Rajasthan, India

Time Period(s): 2006 – 2008

Data Type(s): administrative records data; survey data

Methodology

Collection Mode(s): face-to-face interview

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Published Versions

V1 [2021-01-28]

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