Motivation Without Supervisionexperimental Evidence from Rural Public Servants in Ethiopia

Shirking of front-line government agents can bear important welfare consequences in low-income countries. When effort or output cannot be monitored, motivating agents through contingent rewards is of limited use. We investigate whether enhancing agent’s competence at a task yields higher motivation for the execution of this task. We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment with agricultural extension agents in Ethiopia, where we assess the joint and separate effectiveness of a monetary incentive and a competence enhancement treatment. For agents with lower initial ability, only the monetary incentive yields increased effort and performance. For those with higher initial ability, enhancing their competence is as effective as the monetary incentive on overall performance - although through different channels: increased productivity and increased effort, respectively. Using distinct data from a real-life randomized controlled trial, we provide evidence for the external validity of the results amongst Ethiopian rural front-line government agents