Professional motivation and the quantity–quality trade-off

J. Michelle Brock

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2025, vol. 53, issue 3, 754-771

Abstract: How can professionals be motivated to do better quality work? This paper examines this question through a unique lab-in-the-field experiment on more than 100 judges in a lower middle income country, Tajikistan. I test how judges respond both to monetary bonuses and to anonymous monitoring by peers of the quality of their work. I find that the provision of bonuses leads to much lower quality than in a control group where bonuses are not given. However, offering a bonus while also making work visible to peers motivates the judges to increase both quantity and quality. Random peer monitoring of work is likely triggering concerns about self-image which mitigate the negative effect of bonuses on quality. The results have important implications in labor market settings where strict monitoring of quality is not possible.

Keywords: Self-image; Intrinsic motivation; Crowding-out; Judges; Tajikistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:53:y:2025:i:3:p:754-771

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2025.04.007

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