Fairness, Markets, and Ability to Pay: Evidence from Compensation Executives

David Levine

American Economic Review, 1993, vol. 83, issue 5, 1241-59

Abstract: This paper examines a unique data set based on surveys of 139 compensation executives. Respondents read scenarios describing a hypothetical company and its labor market, and recommended wage changes for several positions. Contrary to some popular theories, differences in unemployment, quit rates, and a company's return on assets led to almost no change in respondents' recommended wage increases. When market wages for closely related occupations diverged, most respondents did not recommend adjusting relative wages within the company; but when the occupations were not closely related (blue versus white collar), most respondents recommended adjusting relative wages to reflect market forces. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.

Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (77)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%2819931 ... O%3B2-8&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:83:y:1993:i:5:p:1241-59

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().