Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools
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Clare Leaver
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Owen Ozier
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Pieter Serneels
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Andrew Zeitlin
- American Economic Review (Forthcoming)
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.
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