Incentives for Students: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments

Arbeitspapier

Incentives are widely used to increase people’s effort and thus performance. Whileacademic achievement depends heavily on effort, there is little empirical evidence onhow students respond to incentives other than grades and monetary rewards. We drawon two natural experiments that occurred at a major European university and use thedifference-in-differences approach to show how program and course policies affect theeffort and performance of students. Our findings indicate that students perform worse(i) if their effort is rewarded belatedly, (ii) if their effort has little impact on their finalgrade, or (iii) if they may resit exams more often and thus less effort is required from them.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: ifo Working Paper ; No. 133

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Analysis of Education ; Higher Education; Research Institutions ; Education: Government Policy
• Thema: Performance ; incentives ; higher education ; natural experiment ; differencein- differences approach ; Studierende ; Ökonomischer Anreiz ; Arbeitsleistung ; Bildungsniveau ; Feldforschung

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Beltz, Philipp ; Link, Susanne ; Ostermaier, Andreas
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2012

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/73726
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ