Analyzing the Aftermath of a Compensation Reduction

Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

No 25135, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Firms rarely cut compensation, so little is known about the after-effects when compensation reductions do occur. We use commission reductions at a sales firm to estimate how work effort and turnover change. In response to an 18% decline in sales commissions, corresponding to a 7% decline in median take-home pay, we find turnover increases for the most productive workers. We detect limited effort responses. Turnover and effort responses do not differ based on workers' survey replies regarding expectations of firm fairness or future promotion. The findings indicate that adverse selection concerns on the extensive margin of retaining workers drive the empirical regularity that firms rarely reduce compensation.

JEL-codes: J3 J30 J41 J42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm and nep-lma
Note: CF LS PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25135.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Analyzing the Aftermath of a Compensation Reduction (2018)
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:nbr:nberwo:25135

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25135

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().