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Pay fairness perception is considered a significant determinant of employee turnover. This study analyzes whether public-sector employees’ pay fairness perception is promoted when workers are notified of the wage level of similar employees working in other sectors (i.e., relative wage). A randomized survey experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that relative wages matter for pay fairness perception. The results show that informing employees of other workers’ wage levels enhances pay fairness perception. The subgroup analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced for employees who are relatively early in their career. The results imply that providing information on relative wage can be an effective way of promoting pay fairness perception, thereby reducing worker turnover and contributing potentially to productivity gains in public-sector organizations where turnover rate is salient.

We are facing a lack of skilled and certified STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) teachers confined to schools with specific characteristics, such as working conditions and neighborhoods. It is essential to understand teachers’ decision-making processes that affect teacher turnover rates to enable schools to retain and motivate STEM. This study hypothesizes that lower job satisfaction concerning location and opportunities for advancement and independence is positively associated with voluntary leave from a school to another school or job switched from the K-12 teaching profession to other industries. We utilized a logit analysis for internal mobility if teachers remained in K-12 teaching but switch schools and external mobility if employed in non-education sectors using the National Survey of College Graduates data. The results varied by teacher experiences and mobility type. For novice STEM teachers, more opportunities for career advancements are needed to prevent external attrition. Internal mobility can be addressed via the overall improvement of the urban education environment and teacher compensation. Administrative support for experienced teachers’ career advancement should be considered. Government policies on STEM education need differentiated support considering teachers’ work experiences and working conditions.

Even though there are many quasi-experimental research in recent literature, there is still no consensus on whether an increase in school funding improves student achievement. Leveraging a natural experiment in South Korea, this study exploits the discontinuity in school funding rules to identify the impact of increased funding on the test scores of high-school students in a national assessment exam. The setting provides a useful context to study the effect of school funding because students typically attend largely similar schools that follow a standardized curriculum, thus eliminating the possibility of the results being contaminated by idiosyncratic variation in school-level characteristics. This study reports mean regression discontinuity estimates as well as quantile regression discontinuity estimates using a procedure suggested by Frandsen et al. (J Econom 168:382–395, 2012). The findings reveal that an increase in school funding, which is equal to approximately 300,000 won per student, results in improved exam performance, particularly in mathematics. Contrary to the stated purpose of the program, however, the evidence suggests that students in the middle and top of the ability distribution gained the most from the intervention, rather than students who are at the highest risk of failing.