Recruitment, effort, and retention effects of performance contracts for civil servants: Experimental evidence from Rwandan primary schools

Leaver, Clare, Ozier, Owen, Serneels, Pieter and Zeitlin, Andrew (2021) Recruitment, effort, and retention effects of performance contracts for civil servants: Experimental evidence from Rwandan primary schools. American Economic Review, 111 (7). 2213–2246. ISSN 0002-8282

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Abstract

This paper reports on a two-tiered experiment designed to separately identify the selection and effort margins of pay-for-performance (P4P). At the recruitment stage, teacher labor markets were randomly assigned to a 'pay-for-percentile' or fixed-wage contract. Once recruits were placed, an unexpected, incentive- compatible, school-level re-randomization was performed, so that some teachers who applied for a fixed-wage contract ended up being paid by P4P, and vice versa. By the second year of the study, the within-year effort effect of P4P was 0.16 standard deviations of pupil learning, with the total effect rising to 0.20 standard deviations after allowing for selection.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Experimental Economics (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 22 Sep 2020 00:07
Last Modified: 25 Nov 2023 03:10
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/76974
DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191972

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