Unfair Pay and Health

Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse, Ingo Menrath, Pablo E. Verde and Johannes Siegrist

No 870, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative panel data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals decide how this revenue is allocated between themselves and their agents. Throughout the experiment we record agents' heart rate variability, which is an indicator of stress-related impaired cardiac autonomic control, and which has been shown to predict coronary heart disease in the long-run. Our findings establish a link between unfair payment and heart rate variability. Building on these findings, we further test for potential adverse health effects of unfair pay using observational data from a large representative panel data set. Complementary to our experimental findings we show a strong and significant negative association between unfair pay and health outcomes, in particular cardiovascular health.

Keywords: Fairness; social preferences; inequality; heart rate variability; health; experiments; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D63 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 p.
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.545955.de/diw_sp0870.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Unfair Pay and Health (2018)
Working Paper: Unfair Pay and Health (2016)
Working Paper: Unfair Pay and Health (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp870

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