Sick Pay Provision in Experimental Labor Markets

Arbeitspapier

Sick pay is a common provision in most labor contracts. This paper employs an experimental gift-exchange environment to explore two related questions using both managers and undergraduates as subjects. First, do workers reciprocate sick pay in the same way as they reciprocate wage payments? Second, do firms benefit from offering sick pay? Firms may benefit in two different ways: directly, from workers reciprocating higher sick pay with higher efforts; and indirectly, from self-selection of reciprocal workers into contracts with higher sick pay. Our main finding is that the direct effect is rather weak in terms of effort and negative in terms of profits. However, when there is competition among firms for workers, sick pay can become an important advantage. Consequently, competition leads to a higher provision of sick pay relative to a monopsonistic labor market.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Discussion Paper Series ; No. 476

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Noncooperative Games ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior ; Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection ; Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
• Thema: sick pay ; sick leave ; experiment ; gift exchange ; Lohnfortzahlung ; Arbeitsvertrag ; Austauschtheorie ; Arbeitsleistung ; Test ; Theorie

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Dürsch, Peter ; Oechssler, Jörg ; Vadovic, Radovan
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics
• (wo): Heidelberg
• (wann): 2008

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/127288
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ