Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall are often described as the first academic economist couple. Both studied at Cambridge University, where Paley became one of the first women to take the Tripos exam and the first female lecturer in economics, with Marshall’s encouragement. But in later...

What happens when a firm switches from paying hourly wages to paying piece rates? The theory developed below predicts that average productivity rises, that the firm will attract a more able work force and that the variance in output across individuals at the firm will rise as well. The theory is...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on executive compensation. We start by presenting data on the level of CEO and other top executive pay over time and across firms, the changing composition of pay; and the strength of executive incentives. We compare pay in U.S. public...

This paper finds that globalization is contributing to the rapid increase in executive compensation over the last few decades. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show that their compensation is increasing with exports and foreign direct investment, as well...

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...

Advocates of teacher incentive programs argue that they can strengthen weak incentives, while opponents argue they lead to teaching to the test.' We find evidence that existing teacher incentives in Kenya are indeed weak, with teachers absent 20% of the time. We then report on a randomized...

The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) and the Hospital Value Based Purchasing Program (HVBP), two components of the Affordable Care Act's cost containment measures, introduced potentially sizeable penalties to underperforming hospitals across a variety of metrics. To the extent that...

This paper examines corporations' actions, and statements about actions, following the tax law change known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Specifically, we examine four different outcomes—bonuses (or other actions that benefit workers), announcements of new investments, share...

This paper is concerned with three types of incentive programs. First, individual wage incentives that cause a worker's efforts to have a major effect on his pay. Second, group incentives in which the pay of an individual is determined by the output of a group of workers-a group can be as small...

In the rural areas of developing countries, teacher absence is a widespread problem. This paper tests whether a simple incentive program based on teacher presence can reduce teacher absence, and whether it has the potential to lead to more teaching activities and better learning. In 60 informal...