ERIC Number: ED514088
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Nov-21
Pages: 51
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Impact of Financial Incentives on Academic Achievement and Household Behavior: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Nepal
Sharma, Dhiraj
Online Submission
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. (Contains 34 footnotes, 12 tables, and 1 figure.) [Support for this research was provided by the Ohio Agricultural and Research Development Center at the Ohio State University.]
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Ohio State University
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Nepal
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A