Antonella Bancalari

Public Service Delivery and Free Riding: Experimental Evidence from India

Antonella Bancalari is a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and a research associate at University College London. The applied microeconomist’s research sits at the intersection of development, health, and public economics. During her presentation, she noted that in 2020 an estimated 3.6 million people worldwide lacked access to safely managed sanitation services, leading to open defecation. This in turn leads to the spread of infectious disease, stunting human capital and damaging the environment. She shared her study, which examined the tradeoffs between public service delivery and free riding in two major Indian cities with inadequate access to sanitation.