Ritva Reinikka

Ritva Reinikka
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Ritva verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
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Ritva verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Aalto University

D.Phil. (Econ)

About

58
Publications
44,702
Reads
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4,725
Citations
Additional affiliations
December 2019 - present
Aalto University
Position
  • Professor of Practice
Description
  • Teaching and research in development economics.
February 2001 - August 2004
World Bank
Position
  • Project Manager
September 1999 - January 2001
World Bank
Position
  • Economist

Publications

Publications (58)
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract: This ethnographic study explores the implementation of bilingual education in Mozambique: how it is understood, adapted, and resisted by school directors, teachers, and local officials. Bilingual education uses local languages in early grades before a gradual shift into Portuguese, which most Mozambican children do not speak when entering...
Article
Full-text available
It has become increasingly clear that budget allocations, when used as indicators of the supply of public services, are poor predictors of the actual quantity and quality of public services, especially in coun- tries with poor accountability and weak institutions. At least four breaks in the chain can be distinguished between spending—meant to addr...
Article
In this paper we argue that innovations in governance of social services are an effective way to improve outcomes such as attainment of universal primary education. To test this hypothesis we exploit an unusual policy experiment: a newspaper campaign in Uganda aimed at reducing the capture of public funds by providing schools (parents) with systema...
Article
What motivates religious nonprofit health care providers? This paper uses a change in financing of nonprofit health care providers in Uganda to test two theories of organizational behavior. We show that financial aid leads to more laboratory testing, lower user charges, and increased utilization. These findings are consistent with the view that rel...
Chapter
Full-text available
Leading scholars examine political, legal, social, and market institutions through a microeconomic lens. The narrative of development economics is now infused with discussions of institutions. Economists debate whether institutions—or other factors altogether (geography, culture, or religion)—are central to development. In this volume, leading scho...
Article
Full-text available
What is the most effective way to increase primary school enrolment and student learning? We argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption. We examine this hypothesis by exploiting an unusual policy experime...
Article
Full-text available
What motivates religious not-for-profit health care providers? This paper uses a change in financing of not-for-profit health care providers in Uganda to test two theories of organizational behavior. We show that financial aid leads to more laboratory testing, lower user charges, and increased utilization. These findings are consistent with the vie...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates the impacts of tax reforms implemented in Uganda in the mid-1990s on the prevalence of tax evasion and exemptions among firms, and their effects on the distribution and dispersion of tax burdens. Based on firm-level data collected from 243 firms, we observe that evasion and exemptions were widespread and that their prevalenc...
Article
This paper discusses survey techniques aimed at a better measurement of corruption at the micro-level and argues that with appropriate survey methods and interview techniques, it is possible to collect quantitative micro-level data on corruption. Public expenditure tracking surveys, service provider surveys, and enterprise surveys are highlighted w...
Article
Full-text available
The current shortage of health workers in many low-income countries poses a threat to the quality of health services. When the number of patients per health worker grows sufficiently high, there will be insufficient time to diagnose and treat all patients adequately. This paper tests the hypothesis that a high caseload reduces the level of effort p...
Article
Full-text available
What are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning? We argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption. We illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experime...
Article
What are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning? We argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption. We illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experime...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The contributors to this book examine the economic constraints to growth and development faced by sub-Saharan African countries. These constraints include the underdevelopment of domestic capital markets, the lack of national and regional infrastructures, and the ongoing dependence on the export of commodities whose prices and markets are volatile...
Article
this article we discuss the role of research in macroeconomic and structural reforms. After examining how analytic work guided policy on poverty and the distributional impact of growth in Uganda, we explore how data were used to shape sector policy, especially policy affecting public services, assets, and governance. We also show how the research--...
Article
Full-text available
The authors exploit an unusual policy experiment to evaluate the effects of increased public access to information as a tool to reduce capture and corruption of public funds. In the late 1990s, the Ugandan government initiated a newspaper campaign to boost schools'and parents'ability to monitor local officials'handling of a large school-grant progr...
Article
According to official statistics, 20 percent of Uganda's total public expenditure was spent on education in the mid-1990s, most of it on primary education. One of the large public programs was a capitation grant to cover schools' nonwage expenditures. Using panel data from a unique survey of primary schools, we assess the extent to which the grant...
Article
Full-text available
This Paper exploits a unique micro-level data set on primary health care facilities in Uganda to address the question: What motivates religious not-for-profit (RNFP) health care providers? We use two approaches to identify whether an altruistic (religious) effect exists in the data. First, exploiting the cross-section variation, we show that RNFP f...
Article
Full-text available
Too often, services fail poor people—in access, in quality, and in affordability. But the fact that there are striking examples where basic services such as water, sanitation, health, education, and electricity do work for poor people means that governments and citizens can do a better job of providing them. Learning from success and understanding...
Article
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This report presents findings from a baseline survey of 155 primary health care facilities (dispensaries, with and without maternity units) that was carried out in Uganda in the latter part of 2000. By collecting data both from the dispensaries and from local governments, it was possible to validate the collected data and check for discrepancies in...
Article
How can service reforms go from being innovative experiments to being adopted on a national basis? In addition to tailoring service delivery to service and country circumtances, information can play a critical role-as a stimulus for public action, as a catalyst for change, as an input into making other reforms work. Even in the most resistant socie...
Article
Full-text available
Reinikka and Svensson demonstrate that, with appropriate survey methods and interview techniques, it is possible to collect quantitative micro-level data on corruption. Public expenditure tracking surveys, service provider surveys, and enterprise surveys are highlighted with several applications. While often broader in scope, these surveys permit m...
Article
Reinikka and Svensson exploit a unique micro-level data set on primary health care facilities in Uganda to address the question: What motivates religious not-for-profit (RNP) health care providers? The authors use two approaches to identify whether an altruistic (religious) effect exists in the data. First, examining cross-section variation, they s...
Article
This paper describes a health education intervention which was conducted during the 1990 dry season in 3 study villages in the Northern Region of Ghana, to reduce dracunculiasis prevalence in that area by promoting the use of cloth filters for drinking water and avoidance of water contact by sufferers. The impact of the intervention in reducing dra...
Article
Despite recent successes in stabilization and structural reforms in many developing countries, the private investment response to date has been mixed, even among the strongest reformers. This disappointing result can be partly explained by the continued poor provision of public capital and services. We test this hypothesis using unique firm-level d...
Article
Full-text available
The weak link between public spending in health and education, and health and education outcomes can be partially explained by the fact that the delivery of services that are critical to human development - health, education, water and sanitation - are widely failing poor people. The money is often spent on private goods or on the non-poor; it ofte...
Article
Full-text available
This paper argues that micro-level tools are necessary to assess both the quality and quantity of services, and the complexities involved in transforming budgets into goods and services. Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) and Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS) have been developed in full recognition of the characteristics of publi...
Article
Contents 1. Why focus on basic services? ..................................................................................... 1 2. Development impact of the project............................................................................. 3 3. Research questions.......................................................................................
Article
This paper explores the extent to which centrally financed educational expenditures are diverted at the local government level. 4 The experimental versus the non-experimental approach are debated in Burtless (1995) and Heckman and Smith (1995). In attempting to identify the impact of the information campaign, we face the problem that the pre-reform...
Article
This paper introduces a new quantitative approach to evaluating the delivery of public services. The paper combines a general discussion of the main features, strengths, limitations, and potential uses of tracing studies and Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDSs) with insights from past and ongoing applications of these tools. The paper is i...
Article
Full-text available
Contributions by Jan Dehn are gratefully acknowledged. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.
Article
Research has had a powerful impact on policy in Uganda, affecting the climate of opinion, improving the quality of the policy debate, and helping focus public policy and intervention on poverty reduction. Uganda's successful use of knowledge and research to help set public policy priorities demonstrates that even a poor postconflict country can, in...
Article
This paper examines the prevalence of tax exemptions and evasion among businesses in Uganda, how they translate into actual tax burdens for firms of different sizes, and how the tax administration attempts to ensure compliance. Despite tax reforms undertaken in 1995--97 to increase the efficiency and equity of the tax system and its administration,...
Article
Full-text available
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...
Article
Full-text available
This paper introduces a new quantitative approach to evaluating the delivery of public services. The paper combines a general discussion of the main features, strengths, limitations, and potential uses of tracing studies and Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDSs) with insights from past and ongoing applications of these tools. The paper is i...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines tax policy and tax reforms in Uganda. Using household survey evidence, the paper identifies which taxes are progressive and investigates whether tax reforms have made the poor better or worse off. Household survey analysis reveals that some of the tax reforms implemented in the 1990s were generally pro-poor. The paper also exami...
Article
It is commonly held that Uganda had a well-functioning social service deliv- ery system in the 1960s. The subsequent economic and social decay all but decimated this system, however. Undoubtedly, institutional recovery is more complex than implementing policy reforms by "a stroke of the pen." While evidence on economic performance is fairly readily...
Article
Full-text available
Lack of private investment is a serious policy problem in many developing countries, especially in Africa. Despite recent structural reform and stabilization, the investment response to date has been mixed, even among the strongest reformers. The role of poor infrastructure and deficient public services has received little attention in the economic...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the recent decentralization of governance in Indonesia and its impact on local infrastructure provision. The decentralization of decisionmaking power to local jurisdictions in Indonesia may have improved the matching of public infrastructures provision with local preferences. However, decentralization has made local public infra...
Article
Full-text available
Investment rates in Uganda are similar to others in Africa, - averaging slightly more than ten percent annually, with a median value of just under one percent. But the country's profit rates are considerably lower. These results are consistent with the view that Ugandan firms display more confidence in the economy than their counterparts in other A...
Article
Full-text available
The authors demonstrate that budget allocations alone can be misleading in explaining outcomes and making policy decisions, when institutions are weak. They diagnose the problem, using empirical evidence from primary education and health care in Uganda, but arguing that a similar problem exists in many countries. Adequate public accounts are not av...
Article
This paper quantifies the welfare cost created by speculative accumulation of imports in Kenya during four trade reforms between 1976–92. These episodes suffered from a lack of credibility because they were perceived to be either time-inconsistent or incompatible with the exchange rate, fiscal or monetary policy. Kenyan data confirms that the priva...
Article
Summary A new micro-level provider survey—Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (QSDS)— will be designed and tested to collect data from primary health care providers in five African countries (Chad, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda). The data collected will be used to generate systematic empirical evidence on frontline health care delive...
Article
Full-text available
Summary Recent studies confirm that bureaucratic or political capture of public funds can be a serious obstacle to improving basic service delivery in many developing countries. Practical evidence suggests that information campaigns using mass media can reduce leakage by mitigating the problem of asymmetric information. This research project will e...
Article
Full-text available
As policymakers in developing countries search for ways to improve health and education for the poor—which, in turn, would boost economic and social development— it is becoming clear that more is required than just additional funds. A key obstacle to better public services looks to be the weak incentives that providers face. Schools and health clin...
Article
Full-text available
Achieving Millennium Development Goals in Africa requires a quantum leap in access to and quality of services. To this end, better diagnosis and understanding of both failures and successes in service delivery is crucial. In this paper, we review micro-level approaches to the study of service delivery. We focus on two types of service provider surv...
Article
Full-text available
Incl. bibl. references and appendices Public expenditure tracking surveys (PETS) allow policy makers to diagnose how incentives and accountability systems are working in practice and how they can be improved. Among the results provided by PETS are estimates of leakage, data on the percentage of funds spent at each level of the education hierarchy,...

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