Can Financial Incentives Help Disadvantaged Schools to Attract and Retain High‐Performing Teachers? Evidence from Chile

Extensive sorting of high-performing teachers into the most advantaged schools contributes to wide socioeconomic achievement gaps in many countries. The Chilean Pedagogical Excellence Assignment (AEP) pays bonuses that are larger if they work at a disadvantaged school. Using sharp regression discontinuity based on program's eligibility rules, we estimate how award affects where choose work. bonus, equivalent 16 percent an average annual salary, increased retention by 17 21 percentage points. In contrast, those more seem use as quality signal stay or move relatively high-achieving schools. While program accomplished its goal retaining already working schools, it did not achieve objective attracting better from