Social Comparisons in Wage Delegation: Experimental Evidence

Gary Charness, Ramon Cobo-Reyes, Juan A. Lacomba (), Francisco Lagos and José María Pérez ()
Additional contact information
Juan A. Lacomba: Universidad de Granada
José María Pérez: Universidad de Granada

No 7802, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This article examines whether social comparisons have behavioral effects on workers' performance when a firm can choose workers' wages or let them choose their own. Firms can delegate the wage decision to neither, one or both workers in the firm. We vary the information workers receive, finding that social comparisons concerning both wages and decision rights affect workers' performance. Moreover, the relative effect of discrimination in relation to decision rights is larger than in relation to wage. We find these treatment effects with both stated effort and a real-effort task, suggesting that both approaches may yield similar results.

Keywords: delegation; gift-exchange; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Social comparisons in wage delegation: experimental evidence (2016)
Working Paper: Social comparisons in wage delegation: Experimental evidence (2013)
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