We design a field experiment to study how the allocation of authority between frontline procurement officers and their monitors affects performance both directly and through the response to incentives. In collaboration with the government of Punjab, Pakistan, we shift authority from monitors to procurement officers and introduce financial incentives in a sample of 600 procurement officers in 26 districts. We find that autonomy alone reduces prices by 9% without reducing quality and that the effect is stronger when the monitor tends to delay approvals for purchases until the end of the fiscal year. In contrast, the effect of performance pay is muted, except when agents face a monitor who does not delay approvals. Time use data reveal agents’ responses vary along the same margin: autonomy increases the time devoted to procurement, and this leads to lower prices only when monitors cause delays. By contrast, incentives work when monitors do not cause delays. The results illustrate that organizational design and anti-corruption policies must balance agency issues at different levels of the hierarchy.

We propose a distinction between active and passive waste as determinants of the cost of public services. Active waste entails utility for the public decision maker, whereas passive waste does not. We analyze purchases of standardized goods by Italian public bodies and exploit a policy experiment associated with a national procurement agency. We find that: (i) some public bodies pay systematically more than others for equivalent goods; (ii) differences are correlated with governance structure; (iii) the variation in prices is principally due to variation in passive rather than active waste; and (iv) passive waste accounts for 83 percent of total estimated waste.

There are 420 million young people in Africa today, and only one in three has a regular salaried job. We study how two common labor market interventions—vocational training and matching—affect the job search behavior of young workers. We do so by means of a field experiment tracking young job seekers for 6 years in Uganda’s main cities. Vocational training amplifies the job seekers’ initial optimism, leading them to search more intensively and toward high-quality firms. Adding matching has the opposite effect, plausibly because of low callback rates. These differences affect labor market outcomes in the long run.

We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs’ diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion and to build a bottom-up measure of CEO labor supply. The comparison of 1,114 family and professional CEOs reveals that family CEOs work 9% fewer hours relative to professional CEOs. Hours worked are positively correlated with firm performance, and differences between family and non-family CEOs account for approximately 18% of the performance gap between family and non-family firms. We investigate the sources of the differences in CEO labor supply across governance types by exploiting firm and industry heterogeneity and quasi-exogenous meteorological and sport events. The evidence suggests that family CEOs value—or can pursue—leisure activities relatively more than professional CEOs. Layperson summary

We develop a new method to measure CEO behavior in large samples via a survey that collects high-frequency, high-dimensional diary data and a machine learning algorithm that estimates behavioral types. Applying this method to 1,114 CEOs in six countries reveals two types: “leaders,” who do multifunction, high-level meetings, and “managers,” who do individual meetings with core functions. Firms that hire leaders perform better, and it takes three years for a new CEO to make a difference. Structural estimates indicate that productivity differentials are due to mismatches rather than to leaders being better for all firms.

We study how women's choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty. To do this we conduct a large-scale randomized control trial, covering over 21,000 households in 1,309 villages surveyed four times over a seven-year period, to evaluate a nationwide program in Bangladesh that transfers livestock assets and skills to the poorest women. At baseline, the poorest women mostly engage in low return and seasonal casual wage labor while wealthier women solely engage in livestock rearing. The program enables poor women to start engaging in livestock rearing, increasing their aggregate labor supply and earnings. This leads to asset accumulation (livestock, land, and business assets) and poverty reduction, both sustained after four and seven years. These gains do not crowd out the livestock businesses of noneligible households while the wages these receive for casual jobs increase as the poor reduce their labor supply. Our results show that (i) the poor are able to take on the work activities of the nonpoor but face barriers to doing so, and, (ii) one-off interventions that remove these barriers lead to sustainable poverty reduction.

We design a labor market experiment to compare demand‐ and supply‐side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low‐income countries. The experiment tracks 1700 workers and 1500 firms over four years to compare the effect of offering workers either vocational training (VT) or firm‐provided training (FT) for six months in a common setting where youth unemployment is above 60%. Relative to control workers, we find that, averaged over three post‐intervention years, FT and VT workers: (i) enjoy large and similar upticks in sector‐specific skills, (ii) significantly improve their employment rates, and (iii) experience marked improvements in an index of labor market outcomes. These averages, however, mask differences in dynamics: FT gains materialize quickly but fade over time, while VT gains emerge slowly but are long‐lasting, leading VT worker employment and earning profiles to rise above those of FT workers. Estimating a job ladder model of worker search reveals the key reason for this: VT workers receive significantly higher rates of job offers when unemployed, thus hastening their movement back into work. This likely stems from the fact that the skills of VT workers are certified and therefore can be demonstrated to potential employers. Tackling youth unemployment by skilling youth using vocational training pre‐labor market entry therefore appears to be more effective than incentivizing firms through wage subsidies to hire and train young labor market entrants.