QoG and GLD lunch seminar with Peter Van der Windt

Title of talk/Presentation

Recruiting and Incentivizing Community Service Providers: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone

Abstract

Recruiting and incentivizing service providers is a central challenge for many low-income country governments. Research emphasizes the potential benefits of involving beneficiary communities. However, we do not know whether community monitoring is more or less effective than performance-based payment schemes or how these monitoring schemes depend upon personnel recruitment strategies. For example, state-led recruitment strategies may mitigate the effectiveness of community monitoring mechanisms, as locally embedded workers may be more responsive to community pressures. We collaborate with the Ministries of Health and Agriculture in Sierra Leone and implement a field experiment involving Community Animal Health Worker recruitment and incentives in 300 villages. We use a factorial design and randomly assign health workers to community monitoring and/or a pay-for-performance scheme. In addition, in a subset of villages, we also manipulate worker recruitment strategies, where workers are selected either by state authorities in collaboration with Paramount Chiefs or by communities themselves. We use behavioral measures to quantify the quality of worker performance.

Bio

Peter is an associate professor of political science at New York University – Abu Dhabi. He uses field experiments and surveys to understand issues related to governance, displacement, and service provision in areas of limited statehood. He focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Development Economics, Political Analysis, and elsewhere. In 2015, Peter received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.