Theory suggests that employee trust is key to productivity in organizations, but empirical evidence documenting links between trust and constraints on performance is scarce. This paper analyzes self-collected data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin American countries and finds that...

A large literature demonstrates that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets but leaves open the question of how mission motivation interacts with another, pervasive source of intrinsic motivation, task-based motivation. We find that in the presence of...

This paper examines the effects of pecuniary compensation on the ability and motivation of individuals inorganizations with non-pecuniary or pro-social missions. In particular, the paper compares flat pay systems, unrelated with ability or effort, to two other systems that are considered...

A booming literature has argued that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets. This paper shifts the focus to task-based motivation and finds that it yields significantly more effort than mission-based motivation. Moreover, in the presence of significant task...

Theory suggests that employee trust is key to productivity in organizations, but empirical evidence documenting links between trust and performance constraints is scarce. This paper analyzes self-collected observational and experimental data on public sector employees from eighteen Latin...

The challenge of public administration reform is well-known: politicians often have little interest in the efficient implementation of government policy. Using new data from 439 World Bank public sector reform loans in 109 countries, we demonstrate that such reforms are significantly less likely...

A booming literature has argued that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets. This paper shifts the focus to task-based motivation and finds that it yields significantly more effort than mission-based motivation. Moreover, in the presence of significant task...

This paper examines new data on public sector employees from 18 Latin American countries to shed light on the role of trust in the performance of government agencies. We developed an original survey taken during the first COVID-19 wave that includes randomized experiments with pandemic-related...