Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools
American Economic Review
vol. 111,
no. 7, July 2021
(pp. 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.Citation
Leaver, Clare, Owen Ozier, Pieter Serneels, and Andrew Zeitlin. 2021. "Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools." American Economic Review, 111 (7): 2213-46. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191972Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C93 Field Experiments
- I21 Analysis of Education
- J23 Labor Demand
- J33 Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
- J41 Labor Contracts
- J45 Public Sector Labor Markets
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration