The Selection and Causal Effects of Work Incentives on Labor Productivity: Evidence from a Two-Stage Randomized Controlled Trial in Malawi

Hyuncheol Bryant Kim (), Seonghoon Kim () and Thomas T. Kim
Additional contact information
Thomas T. Kim: Yonsei University

No 10644, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Incentives are essential to promote labor productivity. We implemented a two-stage field experiment to measure effects of career and wage incentives on productivity through self-selection and causal effect channels. First, workers were hired with either career or wage incentives. After employment, a random half of workers with career incentives received wage incentives and a random half of workers with wage incentives received career incentives. We find that career incentives attract higher-performing workers than wage incentives but do not increase productivity for existing workers. Instead, wage incentives increase productivity for existing workers. Observable characteristics are limited in explaining the selection effect.

Keywords: labor productivity; self-selection; internship; wage incentive; career incentive (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J30 M52 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published as ' The Role of Career and Wage Incentives in Labor Productivity: Evidence from a Two-Stage Field Experiment in Malawi ' in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020, 102 (5), 839-851

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10644.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10644

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().