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When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively and payment for such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal. In this paper, we evaluate how installation of individual meters affects water consumption. Using rich administrative data from the public water utility company in Quito, Ecuador, it is estimated that water consumption decreases by about 8% as a result of the introduction of individual metering. The effect is large and economically significant: in order to obtain the same effect prices would have to double. Individual water metering could be a useful tool to curve down consumption in both developing and developed countries.

This paper evaluates the effect of positive inducements on tax behavior by exploiting a natural experiment in which a municipality of Argentina randomly selected 400 individuals among more than 72,000 taxpayers who had complied with payment of their property tax. These individuals were publicly recognized and awarded the construction of a sidewalk. Results indicate that: i) being selected in the lottery and publicly recognized by the government has a positive but not persistent effect on future compliance; ii) receiving the sidewalk has a large positive and persistent effect; iii) high and persistent spillover effects exist: some neighbors of those who receive the reward comply more too, and these effects can be even larger than the direct effects; and iv) there is no financial motive effect; i.e., people do not pay their taxes just to participate in the lottery. Recognition serves only as a short-term incentive, but the provision of a durable and visible good has more persistent and broader effects. These findings provide evidence on features that make a positive inducement more successful, whether for tax compliance or other policy purposes.

Driving restriction programs have been implemented in many cities around the world to alleviate pollution and congestion problems. Enforcement of such programs is costly and can potentially displace policing resources used for crime prevention and crime detection. Hence, driving restrictions may increase crime. To test this hypothesis, this paper exploits both temporal and spatial variation in the implementation of Quito, Ecuador's Pico y Placa program and evaluates its effect on crime. Both difference-in-difference and spatial regression discontinuity estimates provide credible evidence that driving restrictions can increase crime rates.