IN SEARCH OF WORKERS' REAL EFFORT RECIPROCITY-A FIELD AND A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hennig-Schmidt, Heike; Rockenbach, Bettina; Sadrieh, Abdolkarim
• 署名单位: University of Bonn; University of Erfurt; Otto von Guericke University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 817-837
• 关键词: gift exchange; COMPETITION; fairness

摘要

We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourlywages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory experiments that show a clear own wage sensitivity on effort. In an additional real-effort laboratory experiment we show that explicit cost and surplus information that enables an exact calculation of an employer's surplus from the work contract is a crucial prerequisite for a positive wage-effort relation. This demonstrates that an employee's reciprocity requires a clear assessment of the surplus at stake. (JEL: C91, C92, J41)