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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Learning for a bonus: How financial incentives interact with preferences
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Yvonne Oswald
  • Uschi Backes-Gellner
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Journal of Public Economics
Publisher Elsevier
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0047-2727
Volume 118
Page Range 52 - 61
Date 2014
Abstract Text This paper investigates the effect of financial incentives on student performance and analyzes for the first time how the incentive effect in education is moderated by students' time preferences. To examine this effect, we use real labor market incentive programs that we combine with data from experiments on time preferences. We find not only that students who are offered financial incentives for better grades have on average better first- and second-year grade point averages but also, more strikingly, that highly impatient students respond more strongly to financial incentives than relatively patient students. This finding suggests that financial incentives are most effective at the beginning of an educational program, when real labor market benefits are in the distant future.
Related URLs
Digital Object Identifier 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.06.003
Other Identification Number merlin-id:10319
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