Essays on the economics of education in developing countries

This dissertation consists of three essays on service delivery in developing countries with a focus on education in India. The first essay (joint with Nazmul Chaudhury, Jeffrey Hammer, Michael Kremer, and Halsey Rogers) presents results from a cross-country study of teacher and medical worker absence in public schools and clinics in developing countries. We find that on any given day, an average of 19 percent of teachers and 35 percent of health workers are absent. We find that absence rates are generally higher in poorer regions. Absence is fairly widespread, rather than being concentrated on a small number of "ghost" workers. The second essay (joint with Nazmul Chaudhury, Jeffrey Hammer, Michael Kremer, and Halsey Rogers) studies teacher absence in India in detail. We find that 25% of teachers in government primary schools are absent on a typical day. Absence rates vary from 15% in Maharashtra to 38% in Bihar and 42% in Jharkhand. We find no evidence that higher paid teachers are less absent. Schools with better infrastructure have lower teacher absence. Teachers in schools that have been inspected recently are less likely to be absent. Schools with high teacher absence have lower student attendance and test scores, although the relationship is not very strong. The third essay (joint with Venkatesh Sundararaman) studies the impact of teacher performance pay on student learning outcomes using a large-scale randomized evaluation of a teacher incentive program (which paid teachers bonuses based on average improvement of their students' test scores) in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Students in incentive schools performed significantly better than those in control schools by 0.19 and 0.12 standard deviations in math and language tests respectively. They scored significantly higher on "conceptual" as well as "mechanical" components of the tests suggesting that the gains in test scores represented an actual increase in learning outcomes. Incentive schools also performed better on subjects for which there were no incentives. We find no significant difference in the effectiveness of group versus individual teacher incentives. Incentive schools performed significantly better than other randomly-chosen schools that received additional schooling inputs of a similar value.