Citation

Discussion Paper Details

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Title: Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools

Author(s): Clare Leaver, Owen Ozier, Pieter Serneels and Andrew Zeitlin

Publication Date: October 2020

Keyword(s): field experiment, incentives, pay-for-performance, selection and teachers

Programme Area(s): Development Economics, Labour Economics and Public Economics

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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Bibliographic Reference

Leaver, C, Ozier, O, Serneels, P and Zeitlin, A. 2020. 'Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=15333