Chetty, Saez and Sandor have experimented on the referees of the Journal of Public Economics. They find that somewhat unsurprisingly that shorter deadlines, cash incentives and social incentives make referees faster. Further, cash does not crowd out intrinsic motivation, report quality is unaffected, and spillovers on other referee activites are small or nonexistent. They do note that “[O]f course, referees must forego or postpone some activity to prioritize submitting referee reports. The social welfare impacts of our treatments depend on what activities get displaced.” To the extent that it is just procrastination that is crowded out, the conclusions could be even more positive.

H/t: @JFiva