Identifier
1125
Document Type
Discussion Paper
Date of Paper
6-2026
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.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the support of Julio Valeirón and the research team at IDEICE. We thank the Ministerio de Educación (MINERD) of the Dominican Republic and IDEICE for facilitating joint work between government agencies that produced the data from the Dominican Republic used in this study. This research was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) under a Stage 2 Fixed Obligation Grant, Grant No. AID-OAA-F-14-00030 ("Learning the Value of Education"), and by internal research support from Princeton University. All remaining errors are our own. This project was pre-registered under AEA RCT Registry IDs AEARCTR-0003324 and AEARCTR-0003621. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the United States Government, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Recommended Citation
Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastián Otero, and Gautam Rao. 2026. "Incentives, Evidence, and Reminders for Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers to Policy Scale Up." EGC Discussion Paper 1125.