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

American Economic Review, 2021, vol. 111, issue 7, 2213-46

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.

JEL-codes: C93 I21 J23 J33 J41 J45 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
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 (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)
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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191972

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