Improving the delivery of vital services – such as education, health, and social support – in low- and middle-income countries often depends on understanding the chain of relationships between politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens at different levels of governing hierarchies – and designing interventions with those complex networks of governance in mind. Through a partnership between the Berkeley Center for Political Economy, the Center for Effective Global Action, and the CPD, the Public Service Delivery Initiative brings together leaders from the fields of political economy, development and behavioral economics, public policy, education, business, and public health to promote an interdisciplinary approach to issues surrounding public service delivery.

Specific objectives of the initiative include identifying knowledge gaps related to widespread weaknesses in public sector capability to deliver services; generating evidence on interventions or approaches to recruiting, training, motivating, and evaluating workers in the public sector to improve social service delivery; and drawing generalizable policy lessons applicable to different contexts by accumulating a body of evidence around priority research questions, among others. The following faculty are associated with the Public Service Delivery Initiative:

Ernesto Dal Bó, Phillips Girgich Associate Professor of Business and Director of the Berkeley Center for Political Economy, UC Berkeley
Thad Dunning, Robson Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
Frederico Finan, Associate Professor of Economics and Political Economy, UC Berkeley
Edward Miguel, Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action, UC Berkeley