A Theory of Monitoring and Internal Labor Markets

Gautam Bose and Kevin Lang

No 17623, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze a firm's job-assignment and worker-monitoring decisions when workers face occasional crises. Firms prefer to assign good workers to a difficult task and to not employ bad workers. Firms observe failures but only observe successfully resolved crises if they monitor the worker. If monitoring costs are positive but sufficiently small, for a range of probabilities that the worker is good, the firm assigns the worker to a low task (less sensitive to crises) and monitors her. At probabilities below this range and not too much above it, she is assigned to the low task and not monitored. At high probabilities of being good, she is assigned to the difficult task. We analyze the implications for internal labor markets of the case where a worker has the same ex ante probability of being good at all firms and learning is about ability at this particular firm.

JEL-codes: J01 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cta
Note: LS
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Related works:
Working Paper: A Theory of Monitoring and Internal Labor Markets (2011)
Working Paper: A Theory of Monitoring and Internal Labor Markets (2011)
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