The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance

Steven Levitt, John List, Susanne Neckermann and Sally Sadoff

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2016, vol. 8, issue 4, 183-219

Abstract: We explore the power of behavioral economics to influence the level of effort exerted by students in a low stakes testing environment. We find a substantial impact on test scores from incentives when the rewards are delivered immediately. There is suggestive evidence that rewards framed as losses outperform those framed as gains. Nonfinancial incentives can be considerably more cost-effective than financial incentives for younger students, but are less effective with older students. All motivating power of incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay. Our results suggest that the current set of incentives may lead to underinvestment.

JEL-codes: D03 H75 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20130358
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (146)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The behavioralist goes to school: Leveraging behavioral economics to improve educational performance (2013)
Working Paper: The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance (2012)
Working Paper: The behavioralist goes to school: Leveraging behavioral economics to improve educational performance (2012)
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