Incentives for Public Service Delivery

 

Max Weber Lecture

by Oriana Bandiera, LSE

Wednesday 19 November 2014, 17:00-18:30

Sala Europa, Villa Schifanoia

European University Institute

Oriana Bandiera is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Director of the Suntory and Toyota International Centers for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD).

She is an internationally renowned expert of Development Economics. She champions  an empirical approach to development issues and her work relies on field experiments. Among her most recent work in progress are: Do-gooders and go-getters: career incentives, selection, and performance in public service delivery and Women’s Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa.

In this Max Weber Lecture Bandiera will present her work on how to identify the right incentives for recruitment in public service. The public sector provides several inputs to economic growth and their effectiveness ultimately relies on the effort and skills of the agents hired to deliver them. How can the State use incentives to recruit, motivate and retain talented agents? Do material incentives attract talent or do they discourage altruism? Do material incentives motivate agents to perform better or do they crowd-out their intrinsic motivation and reduce performance? This lecture provides some answers from recent field experiments.

The lecturer will be introduced by Andrea Ichino, Professor of Economics at EUI and the lecture will be chaired by Elena Esposito (ECO MW Fellow 2014-2016).

Find more of Oriana Bandiera’s work on her personal webpage