In 2005, the Democratic National Committee adopted the 50-state strategy in lieu of the strategy of focusing solely on battleground states. The rationale given for this move is that campaign expenditures are durable outlays that impact both current and future campaigns. This paper investigates...

We consider the hiring of public sector workers through legislated rules and exam-based rankings, as is done in many countries and institutions around the world. In them, workers take tests and are ranked based on scores in exams and other pre-determined criteria, and those who satisfy some...

Efforts to attract and retain effective educators in high poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge by using information produced by its evaluation and compensation reforms as the basis for effectiveness-adjusted payments that provided large...

This paper examines the effects of a comprehensive performance pay program for teachers implemented in high-need schools on students' longer-run educational, criminal justice, and economic self-sufficiency outcomes. Using linked administrative data from a Southern state, we leverage the...

A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study...

We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving nearly 700 customer-service representatives (CSRs) in a Canadian government service agency to study whether providing CSRs with performance feedback with or without peer comparison affected their subsequent organ donor registration rates....

In recent decades, many states have reduced future retirement benefits for newly hired teachers. We estimate that in 2020 the average initial monthly retirement benefit, for teachers retiring with 30 years of service, is 11.2 percent lower than that of teachers retiring in the same plan with the...

When an employee expects repeated evaluation and performance incentives over time, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in building relevant skills. Because new skills benefit job performance, the effects of an evaluation program can persist after the rewards end or even...

Information provision, choice simplification, social messaging, active-choice frameworks, and automatic enrollment all increase retirement savings. However, gauging the relative efficacy of these approaches is challenging because the supporting evidence spans widely different institutional...