THE MORALE EFFECTS OF PAY INEQUALITY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Breza, Emily; Kaur, Supreet; Shamdasani, Yogita
• 署名单位: Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); University of Pittsburgh
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjx041
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 611-663
• 关键词: social preferences; comparison income; job-satisfaction; field experiment; wage dispersion; gift exchange; labor-market; work; PRODUCTIVITY; EQUALITY

摘要

Relative-pay concerns have potentially broad labor market implications. In a month-long experiment with Indian manufacturing workers, we randomize whether coworkers within production units receive the same flat daily wage or differential wages according to their (baseline) productivity ranks. When coworkers' productivity is difficult to observe, pay inequality reduces output by 0.45 standard deviations and attendance by 18 percentage points. It also lowers coworkers' ability to cooperate in their own self-interest. However, when workers can clearly perceive that their higher-paid peers are more productive than themselves, pay disparity has no discernible effect on output, attendance, or group cohesion. These findings help inform our understanding of when pay compression is more likely to arise in the labor market.