A Foundation for Efficiency Wage Contracts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhu, John Y.
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20160222
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 248-288
• 关键词: implicit contracts; unemployment

摘要

In many jobs, the worker generates only subjective performance measures privately observed by the employer, and contracts must rely on employer reports about these measures. This setting is a game with private monitoring, and prior work suggests that the optimal contract may be complex and non-recursive. I introduce a novel equilibrium refinement and show that the optimal contract simplifies to an efficiency wage contract: The worker receives a wage above his outside option and reports take a pass-fail form. Each report depends only on performance since the previous report, and effort incentives are provided purely through the threat of termination.