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Motivating Public Sector Employees: Public Good Contributions in Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority

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  • Miquel-Florensa, Josepa
  • Joseph, George
  • Pahuja, Sanjay
  • Tebekew, Tewodros
  • Hoo, Yi Rong

Abstract

We present a lab-in-the-field experiment with employees of the Addis Ababa Water and Sanitation Authority to understand how to improve co-ordination and collaboration in their daily work. Participants play a series of public good games under different rules: a standard game, a game with a threshold, and a game with a randomly selected anonymous monitor with the power to punish. We show that a common goal, in the form of a thresh-old to be attained for the group’s success, is significantly more effective than a potentially punishing monitor for increasing individual effort and, ultimately, group outcomes (conditional on the threshold being attained).

Suggested Citation

  • Miquel-Florensa, Josepa & Joseph, George & Pahuja, Sanjay & Tebekew, Tewodros & Hoo, Yi Rong, 2022. "Motivating Public Sector Employees: Public Good Contributions in Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority," TSE Working Papers 22-1336, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jun 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:126939
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Mantilla, Cesar & Gelvez Ferreira, Juan David Gelvez & Nieto, Maria Paula, 2022. "Costly Norm Enforcement through Sanctions and Rewards: An Experiment with Colombian Future Police Officers," OSF Preprints aebxy, Center for Open Science.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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