Career concerns incentives: An experimental test

Alexander Koch, Albrecht Morgenstern and Philippe Raab

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2009, vol. 72, issue 1, 571-588

Abstract: Holmström's [Holmström, B., 1982/1999. Managerial incentive problems: a dynamic perspective. Review of Economic Studies 66, 169-182. Originally published in: Essays in Economics and Management in Honour of Lars Wahlbeck, Helsinki] career concerns model has become a workhorse for analyzing agency issues in many fields. The underlying signal jamming argument requires players to use information in a Bayesian way, which is difficult to directly test with field data: typically little is known about the information that individuals base their decisions on. Our laboratory experiment provides prima facie evidence: (i) the signal jamming mechanism successfully creates incentives on the labor supply side; (ii) decision errors take time to decrease; (iii) while subjects' average beliefs are remarkably consistent with play, a mild winner's curse arises on the labor demand side.

Keywords: Incentives; Reputation; Career; concerns; Signal; Jamming; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:72:y:2009:i:1:p:571-588

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