Altruism or Money?: Reducing Teacher Sorting Using Behavioral Strategies in Peru

Nicolas Ajzenman, Eleonora Bertoni, Gregory Elacqua (), Luana Marotta and Carolina Méndez

No 10576, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: Inequality in access to high-quality teachers is an important driver of student socioeconomic achievement gaps. We experimentally evaluate a novel nation-wide low-cost government program aimed at reducing teacher sorting. Specifically, we tested two behavioral strategies designed to induce teachers to apply to job vacancies in disadvantaged schools. These strategies consisted of an "Altruistic Identity" treatment arm, which primed teachers altruistic identity by making it more salient, and an "Extrinsic Incentives" arm, which simplified the information and increased the salience of an existing government monetary-incentive scheme rewarding teachers who work in underprivileged institutions. We show that both strategies are successful in triggering teacher candidates to apply to such vacancies, as well as making them more likely to be assigned to a final in-person evaluation in a disadvantaged school. The effect among high-performing teachers is larger, especially in the "Altruistic" arm. Our results imply that low-cost behavioral strategies can enhance the supply and quality of professionals willing to teach in high-need areas.

Keywords: Teacher sorting; Identity; Monetary incentives; Priming; Altruism; Prosocial behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I24 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... rategies-in-Peru.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Altruism or money? Reducing teacher sorting using behavioral strategies in Peru (2021)
Working Paper: Altruism or Money? Reducing Teacher Sorting Using Behavioral Strategies in Peru (2021)
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:idb:brikps:10576

DOI: 10.18235/0002625

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().