Suchergebnisse

This paper develops a model in which a desire to avoid criticism prompts otherwise public-spirited bureaucrats to behave inefficiently. Decisions are taken to keep interest groups quiet and to keep mistakes out of the public eye. The policy implications of this "minimal squawk" behavior are at odds with the view that agencies should be structured to minimize the threat of "capture." An empirical test using data from US State Public Utility Commissions rejects the capture hypothesis and is consistent with the squawk hypothesis: longer PUC terms of office are associated with a higher incidence of rate reviews and lower household electricity bills. (JEL D73, L51, L97, L98)

This paper presents a model of a competitive labour market where workers vary in firm‐specific and general skills, and firms choose the kind of information to disclose. We show that provision of general training, recruitment, and outplacement are linked. Disclosing general human capital information on bad matches but revealing nothing about good matches (information disclosure that resembles outplacement support in professional service firms) leads to an efficient allocation of workers and creates adverse selection that enables workers to pay for general training. It also implies that wages of released workers can be higher than wages of those who are retained.

Abstract There is increasing interest in measuring management in schools. This paper discusses a popular measurement tool: the World Management Survey (WMS) for schools. Drawing on WMS data, secondary sources, and the recent literature on school management, we take stock of the WMS and make recommendations for its use in future research and policy. We conclude that the WMS remains a highly useful tool for its stated purpose—the standardized measurement of (a subset of) management practices within schools—and make two sets of recommendations. First, we encourage those seeking to benchmark management practices in schools to take a systems perspective by extending the WMS approach upwards into the education bureaucracy. Second, when measuring practices within schools, we recommend that researchers consider: how best to assess alignment across practices in the operations domain; the challenge of measuring student learning for monitoring and target-setting; and the context specificity of people management.

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. (JEL C93, I21, J23, J33, J41, J45, O15)

We evaluate a pilot reform of the promotion system for teachers and head teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, that was implemented as a randomized controlled trial during the 2017-2018 school year. District officials were asked to visit treatment schools to monitor educator behavior and student performance passively. Educators in treatment schools were told that their relative performance on these measures would determine their promotion speed. District officials were asked to continue with 'business as usual' visits in control schools, during which they often coached educators. We find null treatment effects for all pre-registered student and educator outcomes. In-class teaching practices improved from baseline to endline, but these sizeable changes were similar in magnitude in all schools. Videos of inspection visits and follow-up interviews reveal that district officials coached teachers on these practices in all schools, indicating that they struggled to adapt their 'mental model' to the new accountability regime. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; DCA; Pakistan Agricultural Capacity Enhancement Program (PACE); Capacity Strengthening; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance ; DSGD; PHND; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)