IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9509.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incentives for Mayors to Improve Learning : Evidence from state reforms in Ceará, Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Lautharte Junior,Ildo Jose
  • de Oliveira,Victor Hugo
  • Loureiro,Andre

Abstract

Financial incentives for students, teachers, and schools are often used to promote learning. Yet, little is known about whether similar incentives for mayors produce analogous findings. This paper investigates this question by exploring a results-based financing reform in Ceará, Brazil, which redistributes state resources to municipalities based on education performance. Comparing schools on both sides of Ceará's border over key implementation periods, the paper shows that ninth grade students who were exposed to the results-based financing performed 0.15 standard deviation higher on mathematics and language tests. These impacts increase twofold when Ceará offers technical assistance to municipalities (pedagogical and managerial) and become significant for fifth graders. These gains are seen among students in the top performance quantiles, but reformulating the results-based financing rule to penalize municipalities with more low performers significantly reduces learning gaps. The paper discuss several mechanisms: the selection of school principals, teacher training, the provision and quality of textbooks, curriculum coverage, and school homework.

Suggested Citation

  • Lautharte Junior,Ildo Jose & de Oliveira,Victor Hugo & Loureiro,Andre, 2021. "Incentives for Mayors to Improve Learning : Evidence from state reforms in Ceará, Brazil," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9509, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9509
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/691801610721382062/pdf/Incentives-for-Mayors-to-Improve-Learning-Evidence-from-state-reforms-in-Cear%C3%A1-Brazil.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland G. Fryer, 2011. "Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1755-1798.
    2. Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Brewer, Dominic J., 1994. "Do school and teacher characteristics matter? Evidence from High School and Beyond," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Carrell, Scott E. & Hoekstra, Mark & West, James E., 2011. "Is poor fitness contagious?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 657-663.
    4. Scott E. Carrell & James E. West, 2010. "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 409-432, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peters, Jörg & Langbein, Jörg & Roberts, Gareth, 2016. "Policy evaluation, randomized controlled trials, and external validity—A systematic review," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 51-54.
    2. Damon Clark & David Gill & Victoria Prowse & Mark Rush, 2020. "Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 648-663, October.
    3. Jaegeum Lim & Jonathan Meer, 2020. "Persistent Effects of Teacher–Student Gender Matches," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(3), pages 809-835.
    4. Scott E. Carrell & James E. West, 2010. "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 409-432, June.
    5. Jesse Rothstein, 2015. "Teacher Quality Policy When Supply Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 100-130, January.
    6. Michael A. Insler & Jimmy Karam, 2019. "Do Sports Crowd Out Books? The Impact of Intercollegiate Athletic Participation on Grades," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(1), pages 115-153, January.
    7. Lester Lusher, 2016. "College Better: Parimutuel Betting Markets as a Commitment Device and Monetary Incentive," Natural Field Experiments 00561, The Field Experiments Website.
    8. Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "Are Professors Worth It? The Value-Added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(3), pages 836-863.
    9. Battaglia, Marianna & Lebedinski, Lara, 2015. "Equal Access to Education: An Evaluation of the Roma Teaching Assistant Program in Serbia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 62-81.
    10. Belot, Michèle & James, Jonathan, 2014. "A new perspective on the issue of selection bias in randomized controlled field experiments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 326-328.
    11. Beleche, Trinidad & Fairris, David & Marks, Mindy, 2012. "Do course evaluations truly reflect student learning? Evidence from an objectively graded post-test," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 709-719.
    12. Oswald, Yvonne & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2014. "Learning for a bonus: How financial incentives interact with preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 52-61.
    13. Feld, Jan & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zölitz, Ulf, 2019. "Students are almost as effective as professors in university teaching," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    14. Scott E. Carrell & Michal Kurlaender, 2023. "My Professor Cares: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Faculty Engagement," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 113-141, November.
    15. Pieter De Vlieger & Brian Jacob & Kevin Stange, 2018. "Measuring Instructor Effectiveness in Higher Education," NBER Chapters, in: Productivity in Higher Education, pages 209-258, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Gregory A. Gilpin & Anton Bekkerman, 2012. "Cost-effective hiring in US high schools: estimating optimal teacher quantity and quality decisions," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(14), pages 1421-1424, September.
    17. Jones, Todd R. & Kofoed, Michael S., 2020. "Do peers influence occupational preferences? Evidence from randomly-assigned peer groups at West Point," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    18. David M McEvoy, 2016. "Loss Aversion and Student Achievement," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(3), pages 1762-1770.
    19. Verónica Cabezas & José Ignacio Cuesta & Francisco Gallego, 2021. "Does Short-Term School Tutoring have Medium-Term Effects? Experimental Evidence from Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 565, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    20. Podgursky, Michael & Monroe, Ryan & Watson, Donald, 2004. "The academic quality of public school teachers: an analysis of entry and exit behavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 507-518, October.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:9509. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.