public sector bureaucracies. Through a randomized trial in rural China, we study performance incentives rewarding school …

As China transforms from a socialist planned economy to a market-oriented economy, its returns to education are … for education: the China Compulsory Education Law of 1986. We use differences among provinces in the dates of effective … implementation of the compulsory education law to show that the law raised overall educational attainment in China by about 0.8 years …