Policy reforms, governance, and the provision of public goods and services in rural China

This dissertation was motivated by the pervasive concern about the poor living conditions in many rural areas in developing countries. China is no exception. Although China has made some progress in improving its rural infrastructure, the infrastructure is still far from what it needs to be to support a vibrant, growing economy.;The overall goal of this dissertation is to understand what is happening in public goods investment in rural China; identify the factors that assist or constrain local communities and the government in their efforts to improve rural life; and evaluate their impact on villagers. The ultimate goal is to understand if good policies and designs can achieve a greater volume of higher quality infrastructure---even in the poorest of China's villages.;In the first essay---of four---I use data from 2,459 villages and find that the government has begun to invest more into China's rural communities. In addition, gradually, a larger share of the investments is going into public goods in communities that are poor, remote, mountainous, small and ethnically diverse. Although richer communities are still receiving absolutely more public goods investment, the government is funding by targeted grants more projects in poorer communities.;In the second essay I document the quality of infrastructure projects in China's villages and measure whether or not quality has suffered as investment effort has risen. Using data from a subset of the 2,459 villages, after developing several unique measures of quality and farmer satisfaction, I find that in recent years both the quantity and the quality of infrastructure have increased and show that across space and over time quantity and quality are positively correlated. Hence, during the expansion of China's infrastructure, quality is not being compromised.;In the third essay I seek to explain the observed differences in the quality of infrastructure by focusing on the role of project design attributes and village governance. Based on the same data as used in essay two, I have found that within-village quality differences are small and project design attributes have little explanatory power. In contrast, between-village variations account for much more of the quality variability. After demonstrating that village governance is important in explaining infrastructure quality, I conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in bad villages.;In the last essay, using data from poor areas of northwestern China, I evaluate the impact of primary school mergers on the academic performance of 2,446 primary students. I use difference-in-differences and propensity score matching approaches and demonstrate that overall the primary school merger has not harmed the academic performance of students, as some have claimed. I do find, however, that the timing of mergers matter; when students are older (e.g., the fourth grade) their grades rise after merging. The grades of younger students, however, fall.