|
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Erlend Berg; Maitreesh Ghatak; R Manjula; D Rajasekhar; Sanchari Roy |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the interaction of incentive pay and social distance in the dissemination of information. We analyse theoretically as well as empirically the effect of incentive pay when agents have pro-social objectives, but also preferences over dealing with one social group relative to another. In a randomised field experiment undertaken across 151 villages in South India, local agents were hired to spread information about a public health insurance programme. Relative to flat pay, incentive pay improves knowledge transmission to households that are socially distant from the agent, but not to households similar to the agent. |
| Keywords: | public services, information constraints, incentive pay, social proximity, knowledge transmission |
| JEL: | C93 D83 I38 M52 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2013-06&r=hrm |
| By: | Cappelen, Alexander W. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Reme, Bjørn-Atle (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Sørensen, Erik Ø. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Tungodden, Bertil (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We study whether compensating people who volunteer to be leaders in a public goods game creates a social crowding-out effect of moral motivation among the others in the group. We report from an experiment with four treatments, where the base treatment is a standard public goods game with simultaneous contribution decisions, while the three other treatments allowed participants to volunteer to be an “early contributor” in their group. In the three leader treatments, we manipulate the level of compensation given to the leader. Our main finding is that a moderate compensation to the leader is highly beneficial, it increases the average contribution by almost 80%. A high compensation, however, is detrimental to public good provision. We show that paying a moderate compensation to the leaders strikes the right balance between the need for recruiting leaders and avoiding a large social crowding-out effect. We argue that the main findings of the paper are important in many real life settings where we would like to use economic incentives to encourage people to lead by example. |
| Keywords: | Voluntariness; Group behavior; Public goods; Laoratory. |
| JEL: | C72 C92 H41 |
| Date: | 2013–04–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2013_010&r=hrm |
| By: | Annette van den Berg; Yolanda Grift; Arjen van Witteloostuijn; Christophe Boone; Olivier Van der Brempt |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we contribute to the extant Industrial Relations literature, which is almost completely confined to estimating the effects of worker participation within a single country, by conducting a comparative multi-country study using unique data from the European Company Survey 2009. We compare representation regimes within the European Union. We categorize the EU Member States into five clusters with similar participation characteristics: the Germanic, French, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and transition cluster. Across these clusters, we first estimate the effects of the presence of what we refer to as an information and consultation body on firm performance, measured by economic performance of the establishment as assessed by managers-respondents. Second, we estimate the effects of managerial attitudes on performance, as we assume - and find - that only taking into account the mere presence of a worker representation is insufficient, as mutual understandings between management and employee representatives affect the functioning of the employee representation body, and hence firm performance. |
| Keywords: | employee representation, works councils, firm performance, international comparison, Europe, ECS2009 |
| JEL: | J53 M54 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1305&r=hrm |
| By: | albanese, marina; navarra, cecilia; Tortia, Ermanno |
| Abstract: | The standard explanation of wage rigidity in principal agent and in efficiency wage models is related to worker risk-aversion. However, these explanations do not consider at least two important classes of empirical evidence: (1) In worker cooperatives workers appear to behave in a less risk averse way than in for profit firms and to accept fluctuating wages; (2) The emerging experimental evidence on the employment contract shows that most workers prefer higher but more uncertain wages to lower fixed wages. Workers do not appear to express a preference for fixed wages in all situations and different ownership forms, in our case worker cooperatives and for-profit firms, behave in different ways when dealing with the trade-off between wage rigidity and employment fluctuations. More specifically, worker cooperatives are characterized, in relative terms, by fixed employment levels and fluctuating wages, while for-profit firms are characterized by fixed wages and fluctuating employment. Our paper reinterprets these stylized facts by focusing on the relationship between wage rigidity and worker risk aversion in light of the presence of employer post contractual opportunism. Contractual incompleteness and private information on the side of the employer can compound in favouring the pursuit of the employer’s objectives, when they diverge from the employee’s ones. The idea of employer moral hazard is able to disentangle the observed behavioural differences in different ownership forms. By resorting to the standard efficiency wage framework, we show that, in the presence of employer moral hazard, employees in capitalistic firms generally prefer fixed wage, accepting this way a positive risk of lay-off. On the contrary, one of the main functions of fluctuating wages in worker cooperatives is to minimize the risk of lay-off. |
| Keywords: | risk aversion; employer contract; moral hazard; asymmetric information; hidden action; risk aversion; income insurance; employment insurance; worker cooperatives |
| JEL: | D82 J31 L23 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:46343&r=hrm |
| By: | Marina Albanese; Cecilia Navarra; Ermanno Tortia |
| Abstract: | The standard explanation of wage rigidity in principal agent and in efficiency wage models is related to worker risk-aversion. However, these explanations do not consider at least two important classes of empirical evidence: (1) In worker cooperatives workers appear to behave in a less risk averse way than in for profit firms and to accept fluctuating wages; (2) The emerging experimental evidence on the employment contract shows that most workers prefer higher but more uncertain wages to lower fixed wages. Workers do not appear to express a preference for fixed wages in all situations and different ownership forms, in our case worker cooperatives and for-profit firms, behave in different ways when dealing with the trade-off between wage rigidity and employment fluctuations. More specifically, worker cooperatives are characterized, in relative terms, by fixed employment levels and fluctuating wages, while for-profit firms are characterized by fixed wages and fluctuating employment. Our paper reinterprets these stylized facts by focusing on the relationship between wage rigidity and worker risk aversion in light of the presence of employer post contractual opportunism. Contractual incompleteness and private information on the side of the employer can compound in favouring the pursuit of the employerÕs objectives, when they diverge from the employeeÕs ones. The idea of employer moral hazard is able to disentangle the observed behavioural differences in different ownership forms. By resorting to the standard efficiency wage framework, we show that, in the presence of employer moral hazard, employees in capitalistic firms generally prefer fixed wage, accepting this way a positive risk of lay-off. On the contrary, one of the main functions of fluctuating wages in worker cooperatives is to minimize the risk of lay-off. |
| Keywords: | risk aversion, employer contract, moral hazard, asymmetric information, hidden action, risk aversion, income insurance, employment insurance, worker cooperatives |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpem:2013/02&r=hrm |
| By: | Pisa, M. Isabel; Sánchez, Rosario |
| Abstract: | Work incentives are closely related to production performance. This paper presents evidence that the value added of a firm increases when relative labor costs rise, or the level of unemployment increases. Both circumstances imply evidence in favor of the efficiency wage model. This theory is consistent with the views of many managers and personal administrators, who tend to ascribe primary importance to wage setting as an incentive to increase effort. We use a micro panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms, during the period 2004–2009, to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier of a firm’s value added and the inefficiency determinants. The data source is published in the Spanish Industrial Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE), collected by the Fundación SEPI. |
| Keywords: | efficiency, value added, labor economic, industrial relations. |
| JEL: | D2 J23 J24 L60 |
| Date: | 2013–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:46487&r=hrm |
| By: | Andrea Garnero; François Rycx |
| Abstract: | We estimate the impact of workforce diversity on productivity, wages and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits) using detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data. Findings, robust to a large set of covariates, specifications and econometric issues, show that educational (age) diversity is beneficial (harmful) for firm productivity and wages. The consequences of gender diversity are found to depend on the technological/knowledge environment of firms. While gender diversity generates significant gains in high-tech/knowledge intensive sectors, the opposite result is obtained in more traditional industries. Overall, findings do not point to sizeable productivity-wage gaps except for age diversity. |
| Keywords: | Labour diversity; productivity; wages; linked panel data;; GMM |
| JEL: | D24 J24 J31 M12 |
| Date: | 2013–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dul:wpaper:2013/143169&r=hrm |
| By: | Christian Robert (SAF - Laboratoire de Sciences Actuarielle et Financière - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I : EA2429); Pierre-Emmanuel Thérond (SAF - Laboratoire de Sciences Actuarielle et Financière - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I : EA2429) |
| Abstract: | We consider the class of concave distortion risk measures to study how choice is influenced by the decision-maker's attitude to risk and provide comparative static results. We also assume ambiguity about the probability distribution of the risk and consider a framework à la Klibanoff, Marinacci and Mukerji (2005) to study the value of information that resolves ambiguity. We show that this value increases with greater ambiguity, with greater ambiguity aversion, and in some cases with greater risk aversion. Finally we examine whether a more risk-averse and a more ambiguity-averse individual will invest in more effort to shift his initial risk distribution to a better target distribution. |
| Keywords: | Ambiguity ; dual theory ; risk measures ;distorsion ; optimal effort |
| Date: | 2013–02–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00813199&r=hrm |
| By: | Daniel Muller; Lionel Page |
| Abstract: | We present substantial evidence for the existence of a bias in the distribution of births of leading US politicians in favor of those who were the eldest in their cohort at school. The result is robust to both parametric and nonparametric tests and is not driven by measurement error, redshirting or a sorting effect of highly educated parents. The magnitude of the effect we estimate is larger than what other studies on ‘relative age effects’ find for broader (adult) populations, but is in general consistent with research that looks at high-competition environments. The findings are in line with a multiplier effect of early human capital acquisition (Cunha and Heckman, 2007) whereby early skill accumulation lowers the cost of further investments. |
| Keywords: | relative age effect, political selection, regression discontinuity design, school entry cut–off dates, leadership |
| Date: | 2013–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qut:qubewp:wp009&r=hrm |
| By: | Fatih Guvenen; Michelle Rendall |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the role of education as insurance against a bad marriage. Historically, due to disparities in earning power and education across genders, married women often found themselves in an economically vulnerable position, and had to suffer one of two fates in a bad marriage: either they get divorced (assuming it is available) and struggle as low-income single mothers, or they remain trapped in the marriage. In both cases, education can provide a route to emancipation for women. To investigate this idea, we build and estimate an equilibrium search model with education, marriage/divorce/remarriage, and household labor supply decisions. A key feature of the model is that women bear a larger share of the divorce burden, mainly because they are more closely tied to their children relative to men. Our focus on education is motivated by the fact that divorce laws typically allow spouses to keep the future returns from their human capital upon divorce (unlike their physical assets), making education a good insurance against divorce risk. However, as women further their education, the earnings gap between spouses shrinks, leading to more unstable marriages and, in turn, further increasing demand for education. The framework generates powerful amplification mechanisms, which lead to a large rise in divorce rates and a decline in marriage rates (similar to those observed in the US data) from relatively modest exogenous driving forces. Further, in the model, women overtake men in college attainment during the 1990s, a feature of the data that has proved challenging to explain. Our counterfactual experiments indicate that the divorce law reform of the 1970s played an important role in all of these trends, explaining more than one-quarter of college attainment rate of women post-1970s and one-half of the rise in labor supply for married women. |
| JEL: | D13 E24 J12 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18979&r=hrm |