5 them to effort tasks that serve the mission of either their preferred party, or that of the rival party. In their setting, in which mission mismatching actually _reduces_ the utility of subjects (they are asked to exert effort on behalf of a political party that they oppose), they find that mission-oriented subjects exert more effort when matched to their preferred party. Our comparison focuses on a more typical public sector setting, where workers might be highly motivated or unmotivated to deliver benefits to society, but not actively opposed to delivering them.

Dal Bó, Finan and Rossi (2013) report the results of a field experiment in Mexico that comes closest to the experimental analysis we report below. They investigate the effects of public sector wages on the quality and public service motivation of applicants for a particular job in the Mexican government, to conduct community outreach in poor, insecure villages in more remote regions of Mexico. High and low salaries were randomly assigned to recruitment centers. Using widely-used questionnaires to measure public service motivation and IQ, they find that higher wages attract applicants with significantly higher ability (IQ and prior wages). However, higher wages have no systematic effect on the public service motivation of applicants.

We find (as in Mexico) that higher wages enlarge the pool of workers interested in the public sector. However, in our experimental setting, motivated applicants are significantly less likely to choose the public sector when wages are increased. In addition, raising wages has no impact on the ability or workers who choose the public sector. These differences likely arise for the following reasons.

First, we can precisely measure subjects’ task-relevant ability and preferences for the public sector mission. A precise measure of intrinsic motivation allows for a more powerful test of the effect of higher wages on motivation. Second, our experiment focuses on public sector jobs for which private sector pay is almost always higher and in which intrinsic motivation plays a correspondingly larger role. The Mexico experiment concerns a public sector task (community outreach) that is likely to be lower paid, or have no counterpart, in the private sector. Third, ability and motivation are uncorrelated, in contrast to the Mexico case; both the models here and in Dal Bó, Finan and Rossi (2013) predict negative effects of higher wages on motivation, as we document below, when ability and motivation are uncorrelated. Fourth, subjects in our setting can accurately estimate the contribution of their effort to the public sector mission, making it more attractive for intrinsically-motivated high ability workers to apply to the public sector. Finally, it is likely that the distribution of intrinsic motivation within the subject pool in Dal Bó, Finan and Rossi (2013) to the right of (more motivated than) the distribution of our subjects, since in Mexico the pool is drawn from individuals interested in working in remote, poor and insecure communities, while ours comes from individuals who are likely to enter the public or private sector “fast track.” The third issue we investigate is whether actual public sector workers are more pro-social than private sector workers. Prior research has relied on both observational and behavioral data to examine this question. Respondents to the World Values Survey classify themselves as public, private or NGO sector employees. Using these data, Dur and Zoutenbier (2011) conclude that public sector respondents indicate greater willingness to help people who are nearby and Smith and Cowley (2011) find that public sector respondents are more likely to say that they most value a job that is important and gives a feeling of accomplishment. In both cases, the findings are strongest when public sector respondents are more confident in the pro-social mission of the public sector.<sup>4</sup> Our analysis extends these findings with a behavioral measure of pro-social tendencies that is more

> 4 In Dur and Zoutenbier, the effect increases when respondents report greater confidence in political parties.   The associations in Smith and Crowley are strongest when respondents perceive less corruption.