Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17303
Authors: Stefano Caria; Erika Deserranno; Gianmarco Len Ciliotta; Philipp Kastrau
Abstract: A classic problem faced by organizations is to decide how to distribute incentives among their different layers. By means of a field experiment with a large public-health organization in Sierra Leone, we show that financial incentives maximize output when they are equally shared between frontline health workers and their supervisor. The impact of this intervention on completed health visits is 61% larger than the impact of incentive schemes that target exclusively the worker or the supervisor. Also, the shared incentives uniquely improve overall health-service provision and health outcomes. We use these experimental results to structurally estimate a model of service provision and find that shared incentives are effective because worker and supervisor effort are strong strategic complements, and because side payments across layers are limited. Through the use of counterfactual model experiments, we highlight the importance of effort complementarities across the different layers of an organization for optimal policy design.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: O15; O55; I15; J31; M52
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| worker effort (J29) | supervisor effort (M54) |
| supervisor effort (M54) | worker effort (J29) |
| shared incentives (D26) | improved health service provision (I15) |
| improved health service provision (I15) | increased access to prenatal care (I14) |
| improved health service provision (I15) | reduced disease incidence among children (I14) |
| shared incentives (D26) | number of health visits completed (I19) |
| shared incentives (D26) | number of health visits per household (I14) |