Recruiting and Incentivizing Service Providers: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone
Dr. Maarten Voors, Wageningen University
Recruiting and incentivizing service providers is a central challenge for many developing country governments. Research emphasizes the benefits of involving beneficiary communities. However, we do not know whether community monitoring is more or less effective than performance based payment schemes or how these monitoring schemes depend upon personnel recruitment strategies. We collaborate with the Ministries of Health and Agriculture in Sierra Leone in a large field experiment involving Community Animal Health Worker recruitment and accountability in 300 villages . We use a factorial design and randomly assign health workers to community monitoring, and/or a pay-for-performance scheme. We use behavioral measures to quantify service provision. We find that both community monitoring and performance based payment increase performance. In a subset of villages we also manipulate worker selection mechanisms. While selection changes the pool of worker candidates, it does not change the level of service provision.
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Zoom details to join online:
https://unu-merit-eu.zoom.us/j/83626636672?pwd=OFpmT1ZCMGVXUkVOclA5OXRhbS9BQT09
Meeting ID: 836 2663 6672
Passcode: 503801
About the speaker
Dr. Maarten Voors is an Associate Professor at the Development Economics Group (DEC), Wageningen University. His primary field is Development Economics, with a keen research interest in institutions, development and behavior. He employs a variety of methods, including survey, lab and field experiments and econometric analysis. Dr. Voors has conducted field research in Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, DRC and beyond. His recent projects focus on health access, institutional change, rural electrification and efforts to prevent deforestation.
See Dr. Voors' personal website for more details.
Venue: Room 0.18, Boschstraat 24, Maastricht (UNU-MERIT) and Zoom
Date: 05 October 2023
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 CET
