The role of the civil servant in ensuring the daily running of governance is pivotal to any economy. Hence the need for a well-motivated, committed and devoted civil service workforce with a positive attitude to their respective work schedule as designated in their employment contracts written by the government as the employer. The paper investigates, using an asymmetric information model, the rationale behind the choice of level of effort that the civil servant exerts towards his work.

more »

... ely, if adequate effort as prescribed in the employment contract is exerted, there will be increased productivity, better performance and induced public output. The analysis of the asymmetric information model found out that, civil servant's choice of level of effort to exert towards their work depended on the incentive structure availed to them, monitoring scheme of the government, their risk preferences, level of asymmetric information during contracting, and the degree of responsiveness to incentives.