The effective delivery of public services hinges on the state capacity that underpins it. A growing literature has begun to open the black box of the state by examining the personnel economics of the public sector, highlighting how recruitment, incentives, and monitoring shape performance. Although evidence from the private sector documents learning-on-the-job and peer effects in performance), human capital accumulation within the public workforce–and the role of colleagues in that process–remains underexplored.
We study whether training a selected subset of workers enhances learning and improves performance, and whether its effectiveness depends on how these workers are chosen. We implement a large-scale field experiment in Ghana’s health sector in which a new clinical protocol for mid- wives was introduced through training delivered to a small set of informal leaders–referred to as “champions”– who were selected from within each facility.