We conduct a field experiment studying how financial incentives for achieving specific course grades affect university … incentives negatively affect performance, particularly among low-ability students assigned high goals. Survey data suggest this … caution against incentives in education and highlight a novel mechanism through which incentives can backfire. …

We conduct a field experiment studying how financial incentives for achieving specific course grades affect university … incentives negatively affect performance, particularly among low-ability students assigned high goals. Survey data suggest this … caution against incentives in education and highlight a novel mechanism through which incentives can backfire. …

identifies the behavioral response to rank incentives (i.e., the incentives stemming from an inherent preference for high rank …). We find that rank incentives not only boost performance in the related assignment, but also increase the average grade …: rank incentives make students engage more in peer interactions, which lead them to perform significantly better across the …

influence agents incentives and lead to a noncooperative game, even if the agents have to complete independent tasks. I show … substitutes. I solve for the optimal monetary incentives that complement the peer effects and show that the principal prefers …