Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School
We use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in India. In treatment schools, teachers' attendance was monitored daily using cameras, and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of...
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Language: | en_US |
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American Economic Association
2012
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73625 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6105-617X |
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author | Duflo, Esther Hanna, Rema Ryan, Stephen |
author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics |
author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Duflo, Esther Hanna, Rema Ryan, Stephen |
author_sort | Duflo, Esther |
collection | MIT |
description | We use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in India. In treatment schools, teachers' attendance was monitored daily using cameras, and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance. Teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group, and the children's test scores increased by 0.17 standard deviations. We estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers respond strongly to financial incentives. Our model is used to compute cost-minimizing compensation policies. |
first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:52:53Z |
format | Article |
id | mit-1721.1/73625 |
institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
language | en_US |
last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:52:53Z |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | American Economic Association |
record_format | dspace |
spelling | mit-1721.1/736252022-09-30T23:40:12Z Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School Duflo, Esther Hanna, Rema Ryan, Stephen Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Ryan, Stephen Duflo, Esther Ryan, Stephen We use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in India. In treatment schools, teachers' attendance was monitored daily using cameras, and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance. Teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group, and the children's test scores increased by 0.17 standard deviations. We estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers respond strongly to financial incentives. Our model is used to compute cost-minimizing compensation policies. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 2012-10-04T20:06:02Z 2012-10-04T20:06:02Z 2012-06 2011-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0002-8282 1944-7981 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73625 Duflo, Esther, Rema Hanna, and Stephen P. Ryan. 2012. "Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School." American Economic Review, 102(4): 1241–78. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6105-617X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.4.1241 American Economic Review Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf American Economic Association Other university web domain |
spellingShingle | Duflo, Esther Hanna, Rema Ryan, Stephen Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title | Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title_full | Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title_fullStr | Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title_full_unstemmed | Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title_short | Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School |
title_sort | incentives work getting teachers to come to school |
url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73625 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6105-617X |
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