Marcos Vera from the University College London presented a paper “Can public sector managers be paid as CEOs?” The study involved understanding performance incentives for school administrators and how their responses vary with the amount of resources under their control. “School systems in developing-countries tend to be more developed than public health systems and as such are among the top ten solutions to address global challenges”, noted Marco. School managers of 170 schools in rural China received health training on anemia before signing incentive contracts that were tied to anemia reductions. However, the grants they received were non-binding and they could allocate program funds across different items other than the nutrition program.

Grants were given to the schools in two installments, once at the beginning of the program and another approximately half way. At the time of treatment, principals first received training on anemia. Following this, research team members revealed randomly assigned study groups to principals and told them how many sampled students in their schools were anemic at baseline. The identity of these children was not revealed.

It was found that incentives were effective when administrators had a smaller amount of resources with which to implement the program. Increasing the amount of resources earmarked for the program under control of school administrators led to sizeable reductions in effectiveness of the incentives. 

"My research is focused on health and the economics of health both in developed and developing countries", explained Marcos Vera. The field study was a joint investigation between researches from the Stanford University, University of Maryland and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.