published in: American Economic Review, 2009, 99 (4), 1384-1414
In many countries, college-bound high school seniors must pass a test or series of tests. In
Israel, this requirement is known as the “Bagrut”, or matriculation certificate, obtained by
passing a series of subject tests. In spite of the Bagrut’s value, Israeli society is marked by
vast differences in Bagrut rates by region and socioeconomic status. We attempted to
increase the likelihood of Bagrut certification among low-achieving students by offering
substantial cash incentives to high school seniors in an experimental demonstration program.
As a theoretical matter, such incentives may be helpful if low-achieving students reduce
investment in schooling because of high discount rates, part-time work, or face peer pressure
not to study. The experiment studied here used a school-based randomization design
offering awards to all students in treated schools who passed their exams. Randomization
was imperfect because of the clustered design. We discuss alternative strategies for dealing
with clustering in research of this type. On balance, the estimates point to a substantial and
statistically significant treatment effect for students close to the margin for certification. We
also look at a number of mediating outcomes in an effort to determine how students
responded to incentives. These results show students took more tests and were more likely
to accumulate the number of credit units required for Bagrut success.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.