Fighting corruption to improve schooling: A replication plan of Reinikka and Svensson (2005)

In developing nations, supply chain inefficiencies can hinder public service delivery. Resource capture via corruption is one such leakage. In the mid-1990s, only twenty cents to the dollar of capitation grants allocated for primary education actually arrived to schools in Uganda. Reinikka and Svensson (2005) show that bottom-up governance reforms improved head teachers’ awareness of the grant program and substantially reduced grant capture. This replication study will examine the robustness of Reinikka and Svensson’s two primary contributions: how an anti-corruption newspaper campaign improved the receipt of capitation grants and how this additional funding may have contributed to subsequent increases in enrollment.