[ECON20141709]

国民经济学Seminar

 
    国民经济学Seminar由中国人民大学国民经济管理系主办，其宗旨是从国民经济管理的视角，构建一个开放的学术交流平台，推动研究与教学工作。
　　　
　　　时间：2014年12月17日（周三）下午14:00—15:30
　　　地点：明德主楼729会议室
　　　主讲：Sean Sylvia
　　　主题：Pay by Design: Teacher Performance Pay Design and the Distribution of Student Achievement
　　　摘要： There  is  growing  interest  in  strengthening  teacher  incentives  by  tying  pay  to performance  measures  based  on  student  achievement.  Yet,  while  the  theory concerning  the  design  of  performance  incentives  is  well  developed,  there  is  little empirical  evidence  on  how  teachers  may  respond  to  specific  design  features  of performance pay schemes. In particular, theoretically appealing but complex schemes may not outperform less appealing but simple schemes in practice. In this paper, we present  the  results  of  a  randomized  trial  designed  to  test  alternative  approaches  of mapping  student  achievement  into  rewards  for  teachers.  Math teachers  across  214 schools  in  western  China  were  randomly  assigned  to participate  in  rank-order tournaments  in  which  teacher  rankings  were  determined  by  one  of  three  different methods  of  defining  teacher  output  as  a  function  of  student  scores  on  standardized exams.  We  find  that  teachers  offered  pay-for-percentile  incentives  (specifically designed to elicit effort that contributes to achievement gains for all students based on theory in Barlevy and Neal, AER, 2012) outperform teachers offered two more simple schemes  based  on  year-end  class  average  achievement  or  average  gains  over  the course  of  a  school  year.  Moreover,  we  find  that  teachers  behave  in  line  with  theory and  respond  to  incentives  by  allocating  effort  across  students  according  to  returns determined  by  contract  structure.  Our  findings  have  implications  beyond education and  suggest  generally  that  individuals  can  respond  to  relatively complex  features  of reward schemes.　
演讲者介绍：Sean Sylvia（林肖恩）, 2014年取得马里兰大学经济学博士学位，同年进入中国人民大学经济学院任教，主要研究领域：发展经济学、教育、健康及公共经济学等。先后在Economic Development and Cultural Change, the Economics of Education Review, the British Medical Journal and Health Policy and Planning等高质量学术平台上发表多篇论文。
有兴趣参与的老师或同学，可与丁守海教授联系（dingshouhai@163.com）。
 
中国人民大学经济学院 2014年12月10日