Article by TI Alumnus Youdi Schipper in Quarterly Journal of Economics
The article ‘Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania' co-authored by TI alumnus Youdi Schipper (Twaweza), has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Joint work with Isaac Mbiti (University of Virginia), Karthik Muralidharan (University of California, San Diego), Mauricio Romero (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México), Constantine Manda (Yale University) and Rakesh Rajani (Twaweza). Read full paper here.
Abstract
We present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (i) unconditional grants, (ii) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (iii) both of the above. After two years, we find (i) no impact on student test scores from providing school grants, (ii) some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives, and (iii) significant positive effects from providing both programs. Most important, we find strong evidence of complementarities between the programs, with the effect of joint provision being significantly greater than the sum of the individual effects. Our results suggest that combining spending on school inputs (the default policy) with improved teacher incentives could substantially increase the cost-effectiveness of public spending on education.
Citation
Isaac Mbiti, Karthik Muralidharan, Mauricio Romero, Youdi Schipper, Constantine Manda, Rakesh Rajani, Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 134, Issue 3, August 2019, Pages 1627–1673, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz010