Incentives, Evidence, and Reminders for Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers to Policy Scale Up
NBER Working Papers · 2026 · Patrick Agte、Daniel R. Morales、Christopher Neilson、Sebastián Otero、Gautam Rao
中文摘要
扩大有效政策的实施规模，往往需要身负多项相互竞争职责的一线官僚投入注意力。即使政策制定者采纳了有效项目，其实施也未必随之跟进。在多米尼加共和国开展的一项全国性实验中，我们检验了旨在提高学校校长对一项教育项目实施率的干预措施；该项目此前已在一项随机对照试验中被证明有效。在教育部下令实施的情况下，对照组学校中仅有37%经核实确认实施了该干预，而在原始试验中这一比例为83%。曾在此前随机对照试验中实施过该项目的学校，其实施率并未更高，这表明采纳的固定成本无法解释未采纳现象。我们发现，向校长分享研究证据、提供适度财务激励或提供实施协助的效应均精确为零。相比之下，增加提醒电话使实施率提高了20个百分点。针对另一项强制实施项目开展的第二项实验得出了相同模式：提醒产生较大效应，而监督信息的效应较小。我们的研究结果表明，官僚的有限注意力是政策规模化推广的一个重要障碍。
Abstract
Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. Even when policymakers adopt effective programs, implementation may not follow. In a nationwide experiment in the Dominican Republic, we test interventions to increase school principals' implementation of an educational program proven effective in a previous RCT. Only 37% of control schools verifiably implemented the intervention when ordered to by the Ministry of Education, compared with 83% in the original trial. Implementation was no higher among schools that previously implemented the program in the RCT, suggesting that fixed costs of adoption do not explain non-adoption. We find precise null effects of sharing research evidence, providing modest financial incentives, or offering implementation assistance to principals. In contrast, additional reminder calls increased implementation by 20 percentage points. A second experiment targeting a different mandated program yields the same pattern: reminders produce large effects, while monitoring messages have smaller effects. Our findings point to limited attention among bureaucrats as an important barrier to scaling policies.