Causal Effects of Economics Education Crossover Reform on Institutional Accountability in Uganda: A Difference-in-Differences Design

Rather than treating accountability as a monolithic outcome, the analysis theorises it as a multidimensional construct comprising fiscal transparency, procurement integrity, examination credibility and administrative responsiveness. The proposed design exploits temporal variation in reform exposure across cohorts and spatial variation in pre-reform secondary school density to identify treatment effects. A central contribution is the articulation of plausible mechanisms linking expanded economics education to accountability outcomes, including enhanced civic monitoring capacity, improved bureaucratic selection and strengthened professional networks among educated civil servants. The article also addresses key identification threats, particularly non-random programme placement and spillover effects, proposing robustness strategies including placebo tests and bounding exercises. The framework generates specific, testable predictions suitable for application to administrative datasets, school census data and public expenditure tracking surveys. By specifying the causal pathway from educational expansion to governance outcomes, the analysis clarifies why prior cross-sectional studies have produced inconsistent findings and provides a template for credible causal inference in African education policy evaluation.