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  5. Managers’ Productivity and Recruitment in the Public Sector

American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy

ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)

Managers’ Productivity and Recruitment in the Public Sector

  • Pablo Muñoz
  • Mounu Prem
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Forthcoming)

Abstract

Governments face many constraints in attracting talented managers to the public sector, which often lacks high-powered incentives. In this paper, we study how a civil service reform in Chile changed the effectiveness of a vital group of public sector managers: school principals. First, we estimate principal effectiveness by using an extension of the canonical teacher value-added model. Then, we evaluate the effect of the reform on principal effectiveness using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that public schools appointed more effective managers and improved their students’ outcomes after increasing the competitiveness and transparency of their selection process.

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