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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Main Authors: Duflo, Esther, Hanna, Rema, Ryan, Stephen
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Economic Association 2012
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.
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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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