Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School
Open accessAbstract
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. (JEL I21, J31, J45, O15)
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Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India
Banerjee, A. V., Cole, S., Duflo, E., & Linden, L. (2007) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/qjec.122.3.1235 · Cited by 1,398 · see citing works
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Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa
Bandiera, O., Buehren, N., Burgess, R., Goldstein, M., Gulesci, S., Rasul, I., & Sulaiman, M. (2020) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics · doi:10.1257/app.20170416 · Cited by 311 · see citing works
No margin, no mission? A field experiment on incentives for public service delivery
Ashraf, N., Bandiera, O., & Jack, B. K. (2014) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.06.014 · Cited by 101 · see citing works
Training to Teach Science: Experimental Evidence from Argentina
Albornoz, F., Anauati, M. V., Furman, M., Luzuriaga, M., Podestá, M. E., & Taylor, I. (2020) · The World Bank Economic Review · doi:10.1093/wber/lhy010 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Belay, S., & Melesse, T. (2024) · SAGE Open · doi:10.1177/21582440241281855 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“Therefore, while intrinsic motivation provides a promising direction for sustained engagement, carefully designed extrinsic rewards, such as financial incentives and promotions, may also be necessary (Aslam & Rawal, 2019; Duflo et al., 2012).”
Can Solar Lanterns Improve Youth Academic Performance? Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh
Kudo, Y., Shonchoy, A. S., & Takahashi, K. (2017) · doi:10.1596/1813-9450-7954 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
- Authors
- Duflo, E., Hanna, R., & Ryan, S. P.
- Affiliations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2012-06-01
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1241-1278
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2003956254
- Cited by
- 928
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 33 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 61 · 2023: 46 · 2022: 79 · 2021: 85 · 2020: 99 · 2019: 65 · 2018: 52 · 2017: 81 · 2016: 66 · 2015: 58 · 2014: 57 · 2013: 49 · 2012: 32
- FWCI
- 308.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- American Economic Review (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Keywords
- teacher absenteeism, teacher attendance, financial incentives, monitoring, student test scores, compensation policy, educational incentives, India
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