Monitoring and management of common property resources: empirical evidence from forest user groups in Ethiopia

The presence of monitoring institutions affects quality and effort of leaders. We investigate the effect of intensified monitoring on the ability and effort of leaders for a sample of forest user groups in Ethiopia, and find experimental and non-experimental evidence of an important trade-off: monitoring increases leaders' effort but lowers their quality in terms of education and experience. This effort–ability trade-off only occurs in the presence of alternative income opportunities (affecting the opportunity cost of time) and only among a subsample of leaders with low prosocial motivation. For our context, we document that the net effect of monitoring on economic outcomes is positive.