信息技术与政府分权：来自巴拉圭的实验证据
Information Technology and Government Decentralization: Experimental Evidence From Paraguay
Econometrica · 2021 · Ernesto Dal Bó、Frederico Finan、Nicholas Y. Li、Laura Schechter
中文摘要
标准的层级模型假设，代理人和中层管理者比委托人掌握更多信息。当部委领导——即委托人——引入一项旨在提高巴拉圭农村农业推广人员（AEAs）绩效的新型监测技术时，我们估计了主管——即中层管理者——所拥有的信息优势的价值。我们采用了一种新颖的实验设计，在处理随机分配之前获取主管对处理优先级的排序。研究发现，主管掌握着有价值的信息：他们会优先选择那些对监测处理响应程度更高的农业推广人员。我们构建了一个涵盖不同处理推广规模和不同处理分配规则的监测模型，并对边际处理效应（MTEs）进行半参数估计。结果表明，信息的价值以及实行处理决策分权所带来的收益，关键取决于委托人的成熟程度和处理推广规模。
Abstract
Standard models of hierarchy assume that agents and middle managers are better informed than principals. We estimate the value of the informational advantage held by supervisors—middle managers—when ministerial leadership—the principal—introduced a new monitoring technology aimed at improving the performance of agricultural extension agents (AEAs) in rural Paraguay. Our approach employs a novel experimental design that elicited treatment‐priority rankings from supervisors before randomization of treatment. We find that supervisors have valuable information—they prioritize AEAs who would be more responsive to the monitoring treatment. We develop a model of monitoring under different scales of treatment roll‐out and different treatment allocation rules. We semiparametrically estimate marginal treatment effects (MTEs) to demonstrate that the value of information and the benefits to decentralizing treatment decisions depend crucially on the sophistication of the principal and on the scale of roll‐out.