Experimental Design
Our study in based in Peru, where we leverage the opportunity to collaborate with the Ministry of Economy and Finance who introduced a program-- named "Punche Gerentes"-- aimed at attracting and retaining high-quality senior bureaucrats. Our experiment is embedded in a nationwide survey of mayors and bureaucrats targeting municipalities in Peru. The online survey will be collected from late November 2025 onwards--the month when the evaluation for contract renewals start. Although the Ministry will circulate the link to the online survey, the email and information sheet will clearly indicate that this survey is conducted for research purposes, specifying the affiliation of the researchers, and highlighting that no personal data will be shared with the Ministry. Survey responses are not personally identifiable by the State. The participants are the municipal mayors, as well as the appointed managing directors of the four offices charged with public investment within a municipality: (1) Logistics, (2) Administration, (3) Budgeting, and (4) Infrastructure.
The discrete choice experiment is randomly allocated across participants using the Bayesian Adaptive Choice Experiments (BACE) developed by Drake et al. (2025). This method allows us to elicit preferences quickly and efficiently using a dynamic experimental framework. BACE generates an adaptive sequence of menus from which subjects will make choices, with each menu optimally chosen using the information provided by the subjects’ previous choices. While we use a Bayesian approach to randomly generate menus, we will also estimate the willingness to pay–or willingness to hire–associated with each attribute following frequentist inference.
Bureaucrats experiment
Participants are shown two descriptions of contractual arrangements for a hypothetical bureaucrat similar to them (age, marital status, education, public sector experience) and for a similar position to theirs in a neighboring municipality. The two contracts differ in their features and their monthly wage. The features and wages are assigned to participants at random. Each participant faces different contract choices throughout 10 rounds. The description of the hypothetical bureaucrat remains the same across rounds. We tell participants that the type of job is the same and ask them which contract they would choose if both were available. The options are:
1. Probability that the mayor will terminate the contract before its end date, regardless of performance: {5%, 50%}
2. Contract renewal subject to public investment goals: {Not monitored with goals, set and monitored by mayor, set and monitored by SERVIR-MEF}.
3. Corruption: {The mayor is being investigated for corruption, The mayor has never been investigated for corruption}.
4. Salary: {−10%(10%)150%} from reported current salary.
Mayors experiment
Mayors are shown two different profiles of hypothetical job candidates. The candidate profiles differ in their characteristics. Each participant faces different contract choices throughout 10 rounds. The description of the hypothetical mayor remains the same across rounds. Participants are asked to make a recommendation on which of the two candidates to select as a generic technical bureaucrat for a hypothetical mayor similar to themselves. The dimensions we will randomly vary are:
1. Networks: {Without recommendation from mayor’s family or friends - applied to job ad, Recommended by mayor’s family or friends}
2. Helped mayor in the campaign of the last elections: {Helped mayor in last elections, Did not help mayor in last elections}
3. Highest educational attainment: {bachelors, postgrad}
4. Managerial experience: {3 , 9} years.
We anticipate that some applicants will be inattentive and not read the position descriptions carefully. To measure inattention, we will compare the rate of people choosing the lower paid job when the same descriptions are posted but with different wages. Furthermore, towards the end, we introduce an additional round where we ask participants to select the dominated option as an attention check.
Survey: we will collect detailed data that will help us characterize each respondent, including socio-demographics, education, experience, ability through an IQ test and personality traits including the Big 5, public sector motivation, integrity, political ideology and economic preferences (i.e., risk appetite and altruism). We will also collect data on their current and last contract arrangement, including salary and contract features, and their satisfaction with these features.