Social programs in developing countries are often plagued by corruption, especially within the flow of funds from the central government to beneficiaries. For the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in India, the central government disburses funds to local governments based on projected spending. In Bihar, researchers tested the effect of an information technology reform that linked the flow of funds to actual expenditures and reduced the number of officials involved in the process. The reform reduced program expenditures by 24 percent without a concurrent decrease in MGNREGS employment or wages received, suggesting that increased transparency reduced leakage. These results led to a national scale-up of the fund-flow model, with sustained effects.

In this randomized evaluation in Honduras, researchers assessed how the national Programa de Asignación Familiar (Family Allowance Program) CCT program, which provided a combination of transfers to households and transfers to support public goods, influenced voting in local and national elections. In municipalities where households received direct transfers, incumbent mayors faced a higher likelihood of re-election (an increase of 39 percent), but there was no impact on presidential election outcomes for any combination of transfers.