The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers

This paper uses a unique dataset of both public and private sector primary school teachers and their students to present among the first estimates in a low-income country of (a) teacher effectiveness; (b) teacher value added (TVA) and its correlate...

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Main Authors: Bau, Natalie, Das, Jishnu
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/565311493912180970/The-misallocation-of-pay-and-productivity-in-the-public-sector-evidence-from-the-labor-market-for-teachers
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26502
id okr-10986-26502
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-265022021-06-14T10:13:17Z The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers Bau, Natalie Das, Jishnu PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES PRODUCTIVITY TEACHER SALARIES PRIMARY EDUCATION TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS TEACHER WAGES This paper uses a unique dataset of both public and private sector primary school teachers and their students to present among the first estimates in a low-income country of (a) teacher effectiveness; (b) teacher value added (TVA) and its correlates; and (c) the link between TVA and teacher wages. Teachers are highly effective in our setting: Moving a student from the 5th to the 95th percentile in the public school TVA distribution would increase mean student test scores by 0.54 standard deviations. Although the first two years of experience, as well as content knowledge, are associated with TVA, all observed teacher characteristics explain no more than 5 percent of the variation in TVA. Finally, there is no correlation between TVA and wages in the public sector (although there is in the private sector), and a policy change that shifted public hiring from permanent to temporary contracts, reducing wages by 35 percent, had no adverse impact on TVA, either immediately or after 4 years. The study confirms the importance of teachers in low income countries, extends previous experimental results on teacher contracts to a large-scale policy change, and provides striking evidence of significant misallocation between pay and productivity in the public sector. 2017-05-04T19:23:16Z 2017-05-04T19:23:16Z 2017-05 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/565311493912180970/The-misallocation-of-pay-and-productivity-in-the-public-sector-evidence-from-the-labor-market-for-teachers http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26502 English en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8050 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
en_US
topic PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES
PRODUCTIVITY
TEACHER SALARIES
PRIMARY EDUCATION
TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS
TEACHER WAGES
spellingShingle PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES
PRODUCTIVITY
TEACHER SALARIES
PRIMARY EDUCATION
TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS
TEACHER WAGES
Bau, Natalie
Das, Jishnu
The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8050
description This paper uses a unique dataset of both public and private sector primary school teachers and their students to present among the first estimates in a low-income country of (a) teacher effectiveness; (b) teacher value added (TVA) and its correlates; and (c) the link between TVA and teacher wages. Teachers are highly effective in our setting: Moving a student from the 5th to the 95th percentile in the public school TVA distribution would increase mean student test scores by 0.54 standard deviations. Although the first two years of experience, as well as content knowledge, are associated with TVA, all observed teacher characteristics explain no more than 5 percent of the variation in TVA. Finally, there is no correlation between TVA and wages in the public sector (although there is in the private sector), and a policy change that shifted public hiring from permanent to temporary contracts, reducing wages by 35 percent, had no adverse impact on TVA, either immediately or after 4 years. The study confirms the importance of teachers in low income countries, extends previous experimental results on teacher contracts to a large-scale policy change, and provides striking evidence of significant misallocation between pay and productivity in the public sector.
format Working Paper
author Bau, Natalie
Das, Jishnu
author_facet Bau, Natalie
Das, Jishnu
author_sort Bau, Natalie
title The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
title_short The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
title_full The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
title_fullStr The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
title_full_unstemmed The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector : Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
title_sort misallocation of pay and productivity in the public sector : evidence from the labor market for teachers
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2017
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/565311493912180970/The-misallocation-of-pay-and-productivity-in-the-public-sector-evidence-from-the-labor-market-for-teachers
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26502
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