In the public sector, using incentives as a motivational tool is more constrained than in the private sector, and a lack of promotion incentives may dampen morale, performance, and talent retention. I study how bureaucrats' on-the-job performance and career decisions respond to changes in...

It is difficult to test the prediction that future career prospects create implicit effort incentives because researchers cannot randomly “assign” career prospects to economic agents. To overcome this challenge, we use data from professional soccer, where employees of the same club face...