Setting Adequate Wages for Workers: Managers' Work Experience, Incentive Scheme and Gender Matter

David Huber, Leonie Kühl and Nora Szech

No 9713, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Many societies report an increasingly divergent development of managers’ salaries compared to that of their workforce. Moreover, there is often a lack in diversity amongst managerial boards. We investigate the role of managers’ gender and incentive scheme on wages chosen for workers by conducting two experimental studies. The data reveal male managers respond in more self-oriented ways to their incentive scheme. Further, we find that experience with the workers’ task can increase appreciation of workers. Effects are strongest when the managers’ compensation scheme rules out self-orientation. Overall, female managers display more consistency in choosing adequate wages for workers, i.e. their choices are less affected by incentives. An increase in diversity may thus help reducing salary disparities and foster work atmosphere.

Keywords: adequate wages; real work experiment; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9713

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