| This dissertation addresses several specific questions under the broader topic of the efficiency of development aid. I approach this issue from two directions: fundraising and spending. Specifically, the first two chapters consider financing for development projects, focusing on factors that influence private donors' decisions about which charities and programs to support. The third chapter describes results from a study that sought to identify cost-effective means of improving drinking water quality in a rural African setting, with the ultimate goal of reducing childhood diarrhea.;Data for the first two chapters cone from a framed field experiment I designed and conducted with real donors as subjects. Based on decisions about how to divide a gift in a variety of different scenarios, I find that many donors are driven by the personal satisfaction they derive from the act of giving, in addition to altruistic motivations. While this sense of "warm glow" can lead to more generosity, it can also result in inefficient allocations of gifts across charities or programs. Although risk aversion also influenced donors' decisions, few subjects were willing to pay for information that could have enabled them to increase the social benefit of their gifts when there was uncertainty about the social value of gifts to different charities. This might help explain why there are so few rigorous evaluations of international development programs: such evaluations are costly to charities and not highly valued by donors.;The third chapter is co-authored work based on a series of randomized field experiments in rural Kenya where demand for an inexpensive dilute chlorine solution for home water purification is very low despite years of social marketing. We find that price is the most important deterrent to use, while neither persuasion efforts nor peer effects meaningfully increase adoption. On the other hand, locally-elected chlorine promoters are quite effective. A new chlorine dispenser technology drastically reduces the cost of chlorination, and is designed to maximize salience, convenience and opportunities for creating social norms favoring use through installation at the source. This leads to a high rate of sustained use at low cost. |
