Information Disclosure and the Performance of Public Investment: The Case of Costa Rica

This paper provides experimental evidence about the causal impact of disclosing information related to public investment projects on the performance of these projects. Specifically, it analyzes the impact of the launch of the MapaInversiones platform on the physical and financial progress of public investment projects in Costa Rica. The study finds that published projects (the treatment group) perform better than unpublished projects (the control group). Three months after the release of MapaInversiones, financial progress of public investment projects uploaded onto the platform increased by 18 percentage points, and physical progress increased by 8 percentage points compared to unpublished projects. A year after the intervention, financial progress of treated projects was approximately 15 percentage points higher relative to control projects, while the increase in physical progress after 1 year of launching the platform was approximately 1 percentage point.