Protection, More Than Information, Gets Citizens To Pay the State

🔍 How the experiment was run in Kinshasa

A pair of randomized interventions were implemented in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, to test whether empowering citizens changes how they interact financially with the state. One intervention provided information on statutory payment obligations; the other offered protection from abusive or opportunistic state officials.

🧾 What was measured and why it matters

• Intensive margin: changes in the amounts citizens pay to the state.
• Extensive margin: whether citizens begin making formal payments, or any payments, to state authorities at all.

📈 Key findings

• Protection from abusive officials produced clear extensive-margin effects, increasing the share of citizens who make formal payments and who engage with the state.
• Information about statutory payment obligations also raised extensive-margin engagement, but to a lesser extent than protection.
• The analysis explicitly compares effects on both the intensive margin (payment amounts) and the extensive margin (initiation of payments), with the most robust changes appearing on the extensive margin.

⚖️ Why this matters for states and revenue

These results show that empowering citizens—particularly by shielding them from opportunistic officials—can move populations out of a low-revenue, low-engagement equilibrium and expand formal engagement with the state. The findings have direct implications for policies aimed at strengthening state capacity and increasing compliance in low-income contexts.