Education spending mandates are popular around the world, especially among central governments in large, decentralized nations, who find that they may be useful in influencing varied local fiscal behavior. I evaluate Indonesia's education spending mandate policy, which insists that district governments allocate at least 20 percent of their budgets…

Studies show educated citizens are more likely to vote in elections but few papers look at the relationship in developing countries and even fewer analyze whether the relationship is causal. I examine whether education increases voter turnout and makes better-informed voters in Indonesia using an exogenous variation in education induced by an…

This paper investigates the correlates of student performance in mathematics and dictation tests among schoolchildren in Indonesia. This is the first such study to use a new nationally representative sample of Indonesian primary-school students. Our dataset includes unique data on teacher absenteeism collected through direct observation, the first…