Konferenzbeitrag

Effort Incentives and On-the-Job Search: An Alternative Role for Efficiency Wages in Employment Contracts

We study an infinitely repeated principal-agent relationship with on-the-job search. On-the-job search is modeled as a dimension of the agent's effort vector that has no effect on output, but raises his future outside option. The agent's incentives to search are increasing in the degree to which a higher outside option improves his gains from trade. Search also increases the agent's cost of effort thus generating an effort-substitution problem between work and search effort. We show that the principal can mute search incentives by offering an e fficiency wage contract. Due to effort substitution, e fficiency wages increase the agent's work effort incentives for a given bonus scheme. Thus, effi ciency wages serve as a complement rather than as a substitute to piece rates. Our results provide a new rationale for the use of effi ciency wages as an incentive device and hence greatly extend the set of environments in which e fficiency wages are predicted to be useful as an incentive device. Our findings thus also contribute to the explanation of empirically observed inter-industry variation in the size and composition of worker compensation.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2013: Wettbewerbspolitik und Regulierung in einer globalen Wirtschaftsordnung - Session: Dynamic Models of Duopoly and Labor Markets ; No. A17-V1

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games
Economics of Contract: Theory
Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Herbold, Daniel
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
(wo)
Kiel und Hamburg
(wann)
2013

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

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Objekttyp

  • Konferenzbeitrag

Beteiligte

  • Herbold, Daniel
  • ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft

Entstanden

  • 2013

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