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12 - The Millennium Development Goals and Education

Accountability and Substitution in Global Indicators

from Part IV - Skeptical Voices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2020

By
James H. Bisbee ,
James R. Hollyer ,
B. Peter Rosendorff  and
James Raymond Vreeland
Edited by
Judith G. Kelley  and
Beth A. Simmons
Judith G. Kelley
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Beth A. Simmons
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

Precise international metrics and assessments may induce governments to alter policies in pursuit of more favorable assessments according to these metrics. In this paper, we explore a secondary effect of Global Performance Indicators (GPIs): Insofar as governments have finite resources and make trade-offs in public goods investments, a GPI that precisely targets the provision of a particular public good may cause governments to substitute away from the provision of other, related, public goods. We argue that both the main effect of the GPI (on the measured public good) and this substitution effect vary systematically based on the domestic political institutions and informational environments of targeted states. Specifically, we contend that both the main and substitution effects of GPIs should be largest for governments that are least accountable (opaque and non-democratic) and should be smallest for those that are most accountable. We illustrate the logic of these arguments using a formal model and test these claims using data on primary and secondary enrollment rates across 114 countries. We find that countries substitute toward primary (which is targeted by the Millennium Development Goals) and away from secondary (which is not), and that these effects are mitigated as accountability rises.

Keywords

Millennium Development Goalsprimary educationsecondary educationpublic policytransparencysubstitution effect
Type
Chapter
Information
The Power of Global Performance Indicators , pp. 375 - 408
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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