Thursday 17 November 2011

Incentives matter: education file

Incentives matter even for university professors. From a new paper in Economic Letters on Piece rates for professors
Using panel data, we demonstrate a 50% increase in research productivity following a dramatic increase in the piece rate paid for articles by a major Chinese University. The increased productivity comes exclusively from those who were already research active.
Of course one wonders how much of this extra output is actually worth having. Are they producing a whole lot of extra articles at the AER standard or a whole lot at the NZEP standard?

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