Can Bureaucrats Really Be Paid Like CEOs? School Administrator Incentives for Anemia Reduction in Rural China / Renfu Luo, Grant Miller, Scott Rozelle, Sean Sylvia, Marcos Vera-Hernández.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luo, Renfu.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Miller, Grant.

Rozelle, Scott.

Sylvia, Sean.

Vera-Hernández, Marcos.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21302.

NBER working paper series no. w21302

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

Unlike performance incentives for private sector managers, little is known about performance incentives for managers in public sector bureaucracies. Through a randomized trial in rural China, we study performance incentives rewarding school administrators for reducing student anemia--as well as complementarity between incentives and orthogonally assigned discretionary resources. Large (but not small) incentives and unrestricted grants both reduced anemia, but incentives were more cost-effective. Although unrestricted grants and small incentives do not interact, grants fully crowd-out the effect of larger incentives. Our findings suggest that performance incentives can be effective in bureaucratic environments, but they are not complementary to discretionary resources.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2015.