Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/73726 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
ifo Working Paper No. 133
Publisher: 
ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Munich
Abstract: 
Incentives are widely used to increase people’s effort and thus performance. Whileacademic achievement depends heavily on effort, there is little empirical evidence onhow students respond to incentives other than grades and monetary rewards. We drawon two natural experiments that occurred at a major European university and use thedifference-in-differences approach to show how program and course policies affect theeffort and performance of students. Our findings indicate that students perform worse(i) if their effort is rewarded belatedly, (ii) if their effort has little impact on their finalgrade, or (iii) if they may resit exams more often and thus less effort is required from them.
Subjects: 
Performance
incentives
higher education
natural experiment
differencein- differences approach
JEL: 
I21
I23
I28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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