The Consequences of a Piece Rate on Quantity and Quality: Evidence from a Field Experiment

John Heywood, William Siebert () and Xiangdong Wei

No 7660, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This field experiment examines output quantity and quality for workers in a data input business. We observe two sets of workers that differ in monitoring intensity as they move from time to piece rates. The application of piece rates increases quantity, and we find that the resultant quality can be improved with sufficient monitoring. "Committed" workers also produce higher quantity and quality, showing the role of worker selection - which appears especially strong under time rates. Our results thus show how a firm can refine its worker selection and monitoring options together with the payment system to deliver its chosen quality-quantity combination.

Keywords: piece rate; monitoring; shirking; quantity and quality trade off; field experiment; worker committment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D2 J3 L2 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7660.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp7660

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().