How Incentives and Monitoring Impact Extension Staff Performance in Punjab

• In Event: Frontiers of Research on Bureaucratic Politics and Management Mini-Conference: Internal Decision-making and Management

Abstract

Agricultural productivity is recognized as critical for growth, but it remains a challenge in many developing countries, and Pakistan is no exception. There is a critical need for high quality and responsive publicly provided extension, but it is unclear, a priori, how to best achieve this. Specifically, while outreach is relatively easy to measure using objective data, the quality of service delivered is much harder to unpack, as is the relationship between effort and final outcomes of interest, like an improvement in farming practices or yields. In such a setting, the choice between objective and subjective performance evaluation systems is not clear cut. The objective of this project is to understand whether performance incentives can improve extension outreach and quality in general, and if so, whether an objective incentive scheme is more effective than subjective schemes that allow for supervisor discretion.
The Ministry rolled out a digital performance management system called Agrismart among all field extension staff. Making use of the information collected via Agrismart, we design an evaluation to measure the impact of alternative performance pay systems. All tehsils across Punjab are allocated to one of our three treatment arms or held as control. While Treatment 1 (objective) relies on purely objective metrics based on Agrismart for assigning performance-based incentives, Treatments 2 and 3 allow for supervisor discretion while allowing them access to information that is contained in Agrismart. In Treatment 2, the supervisor can view all objective data on Agrismart but use his/her own discretion in assigning staff members into a bonus category (subjective). In Treatment 3, we check the supervisor discretion and align his/her career concerns through top-down monitoring (subjective plus).
Our impact evaluation provides empirical evidence on the merits and demerits of objective v/s subjective performance-pay schemes in complex services such as Agriculture Extension. In doing so, it also collects information across the hierarchy to understand how the bureaucracy responds to and perceives the reform to answers important questions around how such department-wide reforms are adopted.

Authors

• Zahra Mansooor, Oxford University

• Ghazala Mansuri, The World Bank