High-powered incentives for the military and security services have become a common counterinsurgency strategy over the last several decades. We investigate the use of such incentives for members of the Colombian army in the long-running civil war against left-wing guerillas, and show that it produced several perverse side effects. Innocent civilians were killed and misrepresented as guerillas (a phenomenon known in Colombia as ‘false positives’). Exploiting the fact that Colombian colonels have stronger career concerns and should be more responsive to such incentives, we show that there were significantly more false positives during the period of high-powered incentives in municipalities where a higher share of brigades were commanded by colonels and in those where checks coming from civilian judicial institutions were weaker. We further find that in municipalities with a higher share of colonels, the period of high-powered incentives coincided with a worsening of local judicial institutions and no discernible improvement in the overall security situation.

中文翻译：

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强力激励的危险：来自哥伦比亚误报的证据

在过去的几十年里，对军事和安全部门的强力激励已成为一种常见的反叛乱战略。我们调查了在针对左翼游击队的长期内战中对哥伦比亚军队成员使用这种激励措施的情况，并表明它产生了一些不良的副作用。无辜平民被杀害并被误认为游击队（这种现象在哥伦比亚被称为“误报”）。利用哥伦比亚上校对职业更关心并且应该对这种激励措施做出更积极的反应这一事实，我们表明，在高强度激励措施期间，在上校指挥的旅的比例较高的城市中，误报明显更多，在那些来自民间司法机构的支票较弱。