Essays on Incentives and Information in Schools

ix Abstract The question posed in this dissertation is whether the quality of education can be improved in a developing country by means of incentives for students to learn. This complex topic has been subject to a plethora of research studies in economics, psychology, and sociology using data from developed countries, but comparatively few studies have been conducted in the developing world. I discuss evidence from an extensive randomized control trial (RCT) employing a variety of incentive mechanisms, which I designed and implemented in primary and secondary schools in Southern Uganda. This study involved more than 5,000 students aged 11 through 25 who were repeatedly interviewed and tested between 2011 and 2013. I collected data and analyzed the effects of different incentive schemes on students' performance on Math and English tests, and also on their well-being, measured by perceived happiness and stress. The latter is a unique contribution to this field of study. The Preface provides contextual informaton on the Ugandan education system and the experimental design, critical to understanding the choices made at every level of this study. In Chapter 1, "The Dark Side of Incentives in Schools," I discuss the effects of feedback, as well as monetary and non-monetary incentives on students' performance and..