Recruiting for the state: the selection effect of career incentives on performance

About this event

We study how career and social incentives affect who self-selects into public health jobs and, through selection, their performance while in service. We collaborate with the Government of Zambia to experimentally vary the salience of career vs. social benefits across districts when recruiting agents for newly-created health worker jobs.We follow the entire first cohort from application to the field and measure impacts at every stage. We find that career incentives attract more qualified applicants, without displacing pro-social preferences, which are high in both treatments. Over the course of one year, health workers selected through the career incentives treatment are more effective at delivering health services than those selected through the social incentives treatment, and are equally likely to remain in their posts.