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

Hennig-Schmidt, Heike, Bettina Rockenbach and Abdolkarim Sadrieh ()
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Hennig-Schmidt, Heike: Laboratory of Experimental Economics, University of Bonn, Adenauerallee 24-42, 53113 Bonn, Germany, Tel. +49 228 7391-95 (Fax -93), http://www.bonneconlab.uni-bonn.de, hschmidt@uni-bonn.de
Bettina Rockenbach: Lehrstuhl für Mikrooekonomie, Universitaet Erfurt, Postfach 900 221, 99105 Erfurt, Germany, Tel. +49 361 73745-21 (Fax: -29), http://www.uni-erfurt.de/mikrooekonomie, bettina.rockenbach@uni-erfurt.de

No 238, Discussion Papers from SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, 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)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-lab
Date: 2008-06
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Related works:
Working Paper: In Search of Worker’s Real Effort Reciprocity – A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2005)
Working Paper: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity - A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2005)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trf:wpaper:238

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