Economic theory suggests that performance pay may serve as an effective screening device to attract productive agents. The existing evidence on the self-selection of agents is largely limited to job tasks where performance is driven by routine, well-defined procedures. This study presents...

This paper reports the results from a controlled field experiment designed to investigate the causal effect of public recognition on employee performance. We hired more than 300 employees to work on a three-hour data-entry task. In a random sample of work groups, workers unexpectedly received...