The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment

George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1990, vol. 105, issue 2, 255-283

Abstract: This paper introduces the fair wage-effort hypothesis and explores its implications. This hypothesis is motivated by equity theory in social psychology and social exchange theory in sociology. According to the fair wage-effort hypothesis, workers proportionately withdraw effort as their actual wage falls short of their fair wage. Such behavior causes unemployment and is also consistent with observed cross-section wage differentials and unemployment patterns.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1133)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2937787 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:qjecon:v:105:y:1990:i:2:p:255-283.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().