23 The third column focuses only on subjects who study the single academic major that is exactly common to both institutions, accounting. This group not only shares an academic interest, but also a likely future occupation. The public sector accounting majors give 83 tokens more than the private sector accounting majors, even controlling for their charity rating. As above, this result is also robust to controlling for religiosity, income, and risk-taking.

These results contrast with those in past research. In Gregg, et al. (2011), a group that includes general government employees (those in the non-profit, non-caring sector) is not more prosocial than the private sector employees. One interpretation of the evidence presented in Serra, et al. (2011) is also that government-employed front-line medical professionals are not more pro-social than their private-sector counterparts. Only Buurman, et al. (2012) find more pro-social behavior in a group that includes general government employees (all government and non-profit sector workers), but this result may be driven by the presence of workers in caring occupations. What mechanisms could explain greater differences in the pro-social motivations of private and government sector employees in Indonesia than in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Ethiopia?

One possibility is the measurement of pro-social behavior. Only Buurman, et al. (2012) and our analysis use direct, behavioral measures of pro-social behavior. This explanation is not entirely satisfactory, however, since, Serra et al.’s (2011) behavioral proxy for pro-social behavior (results from the Generalized Trust Game), and Gregg, et al.’s (2011) survey data (self-reported unpaid overtime) are both likely to be correlated with pro-social behavior.<sup>21</sup> We conjecture, instead, consistent with the analysis in Besley and Ghatak (2005), that labor markets vary with respect to both the number of opportunities for pro-social work that they offer and the wage offers that governments make in response to changing labor market conditions. If we hold constant extrinsic rewards and the number of pro-social organizations, then a country with a less pro-social public sector should attract fewer, pro-social individuals than a country with a more pro-social public sector. However, these ceteris paribus conditions are unlikely to prevail.

In particular, opportunities for pro-social employment outside of government may be fewer in some countries, so that pro-social individuals concentrate in government employment. Indonesia is likely to have fewer organizations and employment opportunities with pro-social missions compared to the Netherlands and Great Britain.<sup>22</sup> At the same time, in countries where government organizations are not ranked highly internationally in terms of their pro-social motivation, nongovernment employers may also rank less highly (corporate efforts to be seen as “good citizens”, for example, may be less common). In these settings, the intrinsic rewards for pro-social individuals may be higher in the general government sector, even when it is not particularly pro-social.

# **Conclusion**

We analyze intrinsic motivation, effort and entry into the public sector in a novel setting and with new experimental instruments to capture mission-matching. The results demonstrate that mission-matching indeed leads to higher effort: individuals who are more pro-social also work harder for the pro-social mission. In addition, public sector wages influence the intrinsic motivation

> 21 Among the subjects in our experiments, pro-social behavior and responses to the question “can others be trusted” are significantly correlated.

22 Ethiopia has fewer still, of course. However, Serra, et al. (2011) focus precisely on a narrow class of employees (health workers) where non-government opportunities for pro-social individuals appear to be much greater.