Endogenous incentive contracts and efficient coordination

David Cooper (), Christos Ioannou and Shi Qi

Games and Economic Behavior, 2018, vol. 112, issue C, 78-97

Abstract: We examine the effects of endogenous assignment to incentive contracts on worker productivity. Assignment to high performance pay via a market mechanism is roughly twice as effective as imposing the same contract exogenously. This positive effect is largely offset by a negative effect for workers that endogenously choose low performance pay. We decompose the positive effect of endogenous assignment to high performance pay into effects due to selection and strategic anticipation, and find that selection has a greater effect than strategic anticipation. We use a Reverse Sort treatment to show that the effect of selection is sufficiently strong to overcome the direct effect of lower performance pay, yielding coordination at high effort levels in spite of low incentives.

Keywords: Experiment; Coordination; Incentive contracts; Selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 C73 C92 J31 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:112:y:2018:i:c:p:78-97

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.07.008

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