In Search Of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity-A Field and a Laboratory Experiment

Heike Hennig-Schmidt, Bettina Rockenbach and Abdolkarim Sadrieh

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2010, vol. 8, issue 4, 817-837

Abstract: We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory experiments that show a clear own wage sensitivity on effort. In an additional real-effort laboratory experiment we show that explicit cost and surplus information that enables an exact calculation of an employer's surplus from the work contract is a crucial prerequisite for a positive wage-effort relation. This demonstrates that an employee's reciprocity requires a clear assessment of the surplus at stake. (JEL: C91, C92, J41) (c) 2010 by the European Economic Association.

JEL-codes: C91 C92 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (128)

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Related works:
Journal Article: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity—a Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity - A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2008)
Working Paper: In search of worker's real effort reciprocity - a field and a laboratory experiment (2005)
Working Paper: In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity - A Field and a Laboratory Experiment (2005)
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