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

Clare Leaver, Owen Ozier, Pieter Serneels and Andrew Zeitlin
Additional contact information
Clare Leaver: Blavatnik School of Government University College, https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/clare-leaver

No 2021-04, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

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.

Keywords: pay-for-performance; selection; incentives; teachers; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I21 J45 M52 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70
Date: 2021-01-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-dev, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.36934/wecon:2021-04 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools (2021)
Working Paper: Recruitment, effort, and retention effects of performance contracts for civil servants: Experimental evidence from Rwandan primary schools (2021)
Working Paper: Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools (2020)
Working Paper: Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools (2020)
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:wil:wileco:2021-04

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

The price is Free.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College Williamstown, MA 01267. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Greg Phelan ().