• DOI:10.1257/rct.2565-4.0
• Corpus ID: 196594935

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

@article{Leaver2021RecruitmentEA,
  title={Recruitment, Effort, and Retention Effects of Performance Contracts for Civil Servants: Experimental Evidence from Rwandan Primary Schools},
  author={Clare Leaver and Owen Ozier and Pieter Serneels and Andrew Zeitlin},
  journal={IZA Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper Series},
  year={2021}
}

• C. Leaver, Owen Ozier, +1 author A. Zeitlin
• Published 1 September 2020
• Economics
• IZA Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper Series

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.