The impact of financial incentives on academic achievement and household behavior: evidence from a randomized trial in Nepal

Type Journal Article - SSRN eLibrary
Title The impact of financial incentives on academic achievement and household behavior: evidence from a randomized trial in Nepal
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2010
URL http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1681186#
Abstract
We present evidence on the impact of piece rate financial incentives on students’ school outcomes from a randomized field experiment in Nepal. Despite several experimental and institutional factors making it less likely of finding a positive treatment effect, I find that incentives increase average aggregate scores by 0.09 standard deviations. The bulk of the aggregate gain is constituted of large gains in two subjects with relatively high baseline scores. There is no noticeable difference in gains between males and females and incentives have a relatively higher impact on students from higher socioeconomic strata and the lower quartiles. My study contributes to the growing literature on short term impact of academic incentives by recording household response to the incentives. I show that the proportion of students who received help with schoolwork at home, either from a hired tutor or a household member, increased among the subgroups that exhibit the most gains in scores. Finally, financial rewards do not have an adverse impact on students’ intrinsic motivation to learn.

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