Motivating Public Sector Employees: Public Good Contributions in Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority

George Joseph, Josepa Miquel-Florensa (), Yi Rong Hoo, Sanjay Pahuja and Tewodros Tebekew
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George Joseph: WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale
Josepa Miquel-Florensa: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Yi Rong Hoo: WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale
Sanjay Pahuja: WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale
Tewodros Tebekew: WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale

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Abstract: We present a lab-in-the-field experiment with employees of the Addis Ababa Water and Sanitation Authority to understand how to improve co-ordination and collaboration in their daily work. Participants play a series of public good games under different rules: a standard game, a game with a threshold, and a game with a randomly selected anonymous monitor with the power to punish. We show that a common goal, in the form of a thresh-old to be attained for the group's success, is significantly more effective than a potentially punishing monitor for increasing individual effort and, ultimately, group outcomes (conditional on the threshold being attained).

Keywords: Intrinsic motivation; Public utilities; Organizational economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05057558v1
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Published in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2025, 73 (3), pp.1475-1499. ⟨10.1086/731967⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05057558

DOI: 10.1086/731967

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