In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity - A Field and a Laboratory Experiment

Heike Hennig-Schmidt, Bettina Rockenbach and Abdolkarim Sadrieh

Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems from Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich

Abstract: We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. 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 to exactly calculate employer’s surplus from the work contract is a crucial pre-requisite for a positive wage-effort relation. This demonstrates that employee’s reciprocity requires a clear assessment of the surplus at stake.

Keywords: efficiency wage; reciprocity; fairness; field experiment; real effort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity—a Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2010)
Journal Article: In Search Of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity-A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity - A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2008)
Working Paper: In search of worker's real effort reciprocity - a field and a laboratory experiment (2005)
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