In each subvillage, the Central Statistics Bureau (BPS) and Mitra Samya, an Indonesian NGO, implemented an unconditional cash transfer program, where benefi- ciary households would receive a one-time, Rp. 30,000 (about $3) cash transfer. The amount of the transfer is equal to about ten percent of the median beneficiary’s monthly per capita consumption, or a little more than one day’s wage for an average laborer.9
Each subvillage was randomly allocated to one of the three targeting treatments that are described in detail below.10 The number of households that would receive the transfer was set in advance through a geographical targeting approach, such that the fraction of households in a subvillage that would receive the subsidy was held constant, on average, across the treatments. We then observed how each treatment selected the set of beneficiaries.