[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v11y2019i1p277-317.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial Incentives as Signals: Experimental Evidence from the Recruitment of Village Promoters in Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Erika Deserranno
Abstract
I study the role of financial incentives as signals of job characteristics when these are unknown to potential applicants. To this end, I create experimental variation in expected earnings and use that to estimate the effect of financial incentives on candidates' perception of a brand-new health-promoter position in Uganda and on the resulting size and composition of the applicant pool. I find that more lucrative positions are perceived as entailing a lower positive externality for the community and discourage agents with strong pro-social preferences from applying. While higher financial incentives attract more applicants and increase the probability of filling a vacancy, the signal they convey reduces the ability to recruit the most socially motivated agents, who are found to stay longer on the job and to perform better.

Suggested Citation

  • Erika Deserranno, 2019. "Financial Incentives as Signals: Experimental Evidence from the Recruitment of Village Promoters in Uganda," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 277-317, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:277-317
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20170670
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170670
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=QjWDshNYYt0sQGq7wLqitfLOgpNI56PI
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=zCKrWveq5iWuH3sDFhaotAZpDRDntW-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:277-317. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.