Worker reciprocity and the returns to training: evidence from a field experiment

Jan Sauermann

No 2026:3, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: Do reciprocal workers have higher returns to employer-sponsored training? Using a field experiment with random assignment to training combined with survey information on workers’ reciprocal inclinations, the results show that reciprocal workers reciprocate employers’ training investments by higher post-training performance. This result, which is robust to controlling for observed personality traits and worker fixed effects, suggests that individuals reciprocate the firm’s human capital investment with higher effort, in line with theoretical models on gift exchange in the workplace. This finding provides an alternative rationale to explain firm training investments even with risk of poaching.

Keywords: on-the-job training; reciprocity; worker performance; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 J24 M53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2026-02-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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Related works:
Working Paper: Worker reciprocity and the returns to training: evidence from a field experiment (2020)
Working Paper: Worker Reciprocity and the Returns to Training: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_003

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