Incentives in the Public Sector: Some Preliminary Evidence from a UK Government Agency

Simon Burgess (), Carol Propper, Marisa Ratto and Emma Tominey ()

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of a team-based incentive scheme piloted in the public sector agency, Jobcentre Plus. The way the scheme has been designed raises many questions for which theory makes predictions. We test these predictions against our data. We find that team size affects the impact of the incentive scheme upon performance. Moreover, while the measure of quantity increased in incentivised areas, no improvement was found for the two quality measures. This may reflect concerns related to multi-tasking issues, or may reflect the small sample size available for the quality analysis. Finally, the data suggests that employees participating in the incentive scheme aim to exert a level of effort to ensure the target is achieved, but as additional effort is not rewarded they aim not to exceed this limit.

Keywords: incentives; public sector; teams; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H40 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2003-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp80.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp80.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp80.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bristol.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp80.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2003/wp80.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2003/wp80.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Incentives in the Public Sector: Some Preliminary Evidence from a UK Government Agency (2003)
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:bri:cmpowp:03/080

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().