Unfair pay and health

Arbeitspapier

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative field data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals decide how this revenue is allocated between themselves and their agents. Throughout the experiment we record agents' heart rate variability, which is an indicator of stress-related impaired cardiac autonomic control and has been shown to predict coronary heart diseases in the long-run. Using three measures of perceived unfairness our findings establish a link between unfair payment and heart rate variability. Building on these findings, we further test for potential adverse health effects of unfair pay using data from a large representative data set. The analysis includes cross-sectional and dynamic panel estimations. Complementary to our experimental findings we find a strong and highly significant negative association between health outcomes, in particular cardiovascular health, and the perception of unfair pay.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research ; No. 715

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Health and Inequality
• Thema: fairness ; social preferences ; inequality ; heart rate variability ; health ; experiments ; SOEP

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Falk, Armin ; Kosse, Fabian ; Menrath, Ingo ; Verde, Pablo Emilio ; Siegrist, Johannes
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (wo): Berlin
• (wann): 2014

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/106192
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ