Personalities and Public Sector Performance: Evidence from a Health Experiment in Pakistan

This paper presents evidence that selecting better people to work in government and improving their incentives are complements in improving government effectiveness. To do so, this paper combines a policy that improved incentives for health service delivery in Punjab, Pakistan, with data on health worker personalities. We present three key results. First, government doctors with higher personality scores perform better, even under status quo incentives. Second, health inspectors with higher personality scores exhibit larger treatment responses when incentives are reformed. Last, senior health officials with higher personality scores respond more to data on staff absence by compelling better subsequent attendance.