Solar-powered Videos, Integrated Textbooks and the Elasticity of Human Capital to Financial Incentives: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Tanzania

In 2015, close to 90% of Tanzanian secondary school students failed their national mathematics examination. We ask to what extent a low-cost, technology-based intervention can remedy this situation. Collaborating with 172 secondary schools without electricity in northern Tanzania, we provide half of the schools with solar panels, TVs, mathematics curriculum videos and textbooks. We additionally ask how an equally low-cost, performance-based monetary incentives compare. For half of the facilities-receiving schools and half of the control schools, we provide a within-school-varied, monetary incentives pegged on the students' upcoming examination scores. We study reduced-form evidence on the impact of these interventions; in particular, evidence on how the elasticity of human capital to external incentives responds to the introduction of a new learning facility. We also study structural estimates of heterogeneous preferences for knowledge and welfare across students by estimating and extending upon recent models of coordinated learning in the classroom.

*To learn more about key findings from this evaluation read Do school electrification and provision of digital media deliver educational benefits?