Incentives Work: getting teachers to come to school - India

Question 1

Authors of the paper?

Answer 1

Duflo et al (2012)

Question 2

The experiment:

Answer 2

In treated schools, teachers’ attendance was monitored using cameras and their salaries were a non-linear function of attendance.

Question 3

In treatment group:

Answer 3

Teacher absenteeism fell by 21% points relative to the control group.
Children’s test scores increased by 0.17 std devs.
Attendance was consistently higher for the 2.5 years following the end of the test.

Question 4

Non-linearity of the attendance pay created different incentives for the teachers…

Answer 4

E.g. the pay incentives for attending one day of the month are the same as attending 10… so if you re ill for 20 days of the month, you only have an incentive to work one day because they pay is the same as if you had worked the rest of the month.

Question 5

Possible selection bias

Answer 5

Only the schools that were open were inspected.

Question 6

A child in a treatment school received how many more days of instruction?

Answer 6

9% points (2.7 days).

Question 7

Test scores in treated schools were how much higher than in comparison schools?

Answer 7

0.17 standard deviations.