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KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

최신자료
Command and Can’t Control : Assessing Centralized Accountability in the Public Sector
World Bank
2025.09.12
A long-established and widely used approach to management in government has been the transmission of information up a hierarchy, and centralized decision-making and oversight; colloquially known as ‘command and control’. This paper examines accountability in such a system implemented at scale in Punjab, Pakistan. Using random variation in the intensity of accountability of the scheme, the paper shows that the corresponding de facto punishments had a negligible impact on school or student outcomes. It uses detailed data on the education production function to show that this fundamental component of command-and-control approaches does not induce bureaucratic action towards improvements in government performance.