Do service providers respond to pecuniary incentives to serve the poor? Service delivery to the poor is complicated by the extra effort required to deliver services to them and the intrinsic incentives of service providers to exert this effort. Incentive schemes typically fail to account for...

A booming literature has argued that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets. This paper shifts the focus to task-based motivation and finds that it yields significantly more effort than mission-based motivation. Moreover, in the presence of significant task...

Performance-based financing is a complex health system intervention aimed at improving coverage and quality of care. This paper presents the results of an impact evaluation in Cameroon that seeks to isolate the role of specific components of the performance-based financing approach on outcomes...

Pay schemes in the public sector aim to attract motivated, high-ability applicants. A nascent literature has found positive effects of higher pay on ability and no or slightly positive effects on motivation. This paper revisits this issue with a novel subject pool, students destined for the...

This paper examines the effects of pecuniary compensation on the ability and motivation of individuals in organizations with non-pecuniary or pro-social missions. In particular, the paper compares flat pay systems, unrelated with ability or effort, to two other systems that are considered...

The quest for status is a powerful motivator, but does it affect inequality? This paper presents a novel lab experiment that was designed and conducted to identify the relationship between inequality, status signaling, debt, and conspicuous consumption. It reports three main findings: First,...

A large literature focuses on the biases of individuals and consumers, as well as "nudges" and other policies that can address those biases. Although policy decisions are often more consequential than those of individual consumers, there is a dearth of studies on the biases of policy...

Two decades of empirical evaluation have shown that corruption has a negative impact on economic growth, political stability, judicial effectiveness, democratization, educational attainment, and equality of income. However, corruption exists, persists, and varies significantly by culture. Lab...

Financial incentives are a promising HIV prevention strategy. This paper assesses the effect on HIV incidence of a lottery program in Lesotho with low expected payments but a chance to win a high prize conditional on negative test results for sexually transmitted infections. The intervention...

The study is a randomized controlled trial that investigates the impact of four demand-side interventions on health screening for diabetes and hypertension among Armenian adults ages 35-68 who had not been tested in the last 12 months. The interventions are personal invitations from a physician...