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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Haoran He; David Neumark; Qian Weng |
| Abstract: | We explore compensating differentials for job flexibility, using a field experiment conducted on a Chinese job board. Our job ads differ randomly regarding when one works (time flexibility) and where one works (place flexibility). We find strong evidence that workers value job flexibility - especially regarding place of work. Application rates are higher to flexible jobs, conditional on the salary offered. Additional survey evidence indicates that workers are willing to take lower pay for more flexible jobs. Non-experimental job board data do not indicate that workers value job flexibility, reinforcing the difficulty of estimating compensating differentials from observational data. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00667&r=all |
| By: | Manuel Hoffmann; Roberto Mosquera; Adrian Chadi |
| Abstract: | Influenza imposes substantial costs worldwide in terms of human lives and productivity losses. Vaccination could be a cost-effective way to reduce these costs for firms and public health institutions, but low take-up rates, particularly of working adults, and vaccination unintendingly causing moral hazard may decrease its benefits. We ran a natural field experiment in cooperation with a major bank in Ecuador where we modified a company-wide vaccination campaign. Experimentally manipulating incentives to participate in this health intervention allows us to study peer effects with organizational data and to determine the personal consequences of being randomly encouraged to take part in the campaign. We find that assigning employees to get vaccinated during the workweek increased take-up by 112% compared to employees assigned to the weekend, which indicates that reducing opportunity costs plays an important role to increase vaccination rates. Peer take-up also increased individual take-up significantly. Contrary to the company's expectations, we find that the effect of vaccination on health outcomes is a precise zero with no measurable health externalities from coworkers. Using a dataset of administrative records on sickness diagnoses and employee surveys, we find evidence consistent with vaccination causing moral hazard, which could decrease the effectiveness of vaccination. |
| Keywords: | Health Intervention, Flu Vaccination, Sickness-Related Absence, Field Experiment, Random Encouragement Design, Moral Hazard, Technology Adoption |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0116&r=all |
| By: | Booth, Alison L. (Australian National University); Lee, Jungmin (Seoul National University) |
| Abstract: | We compare the performance of high-ability adolescent girls and boys who participated in a a long-running Korean television quiz show. We find there is a gender gap in performance – in favour of boys – across episodes of the quiz show. To investigate underlying mechanisms that might explain this, we explore how male and female performance varies under different rules of the game. We find that there are no gender gaps when stress is kept to a minimum – that is, in games without fastest-finger buzzer, knock-outs or penalties. However, in games with these features, there are significant gender gaps. In addition, we examine performance in Round 2 of the shows, where we find larger gender gaps. These are consistent with girls being increasingly hindered by psychological stress and risk aversion as competition is higher. Finally, we use panel data to estimate performance in the games in which players stay in for 25 questions. Here we find that girls are less likely to respond faster especially when their winning probability is higher. Further, the gender gap is more salient at the end of the game. The results are also consistent with gendered behavioural responses to psychological pressure. |
| Keywords: | gender and competition, tournaments, psychological pressure, risk aversion |
| JEL: | J16 I21 D9 L83 M5 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12182&r=all |
| By: | Albert, Philipp (WZB Berlin); Kübler, Dorothea (WZB Berlin); Silva-Goncalves, Juliana (University of Sydney) |
| Abstract: | Ambition as the desire for personal achievement is an important driver of behavior. Using laboratory experiments, we study the role of social influence on ambition in two distinct domains of achievement, namely performance goals and task complexity. In the first case, participants set themselves a performance goal for a task they have to work on. The goal is associated with a proportional bonus that is added to a piece rate if the goal is reached. In the second case, they choose the complexity of the task, which is positively associated with the piece rate compensation and effort. In both cases we test whether observing peer choices influences own choices. We find strong evidence of peer effects on performance goals. In contrast, we find no support for peer effects on the choice of task complexity. |
| Keywords: | peer effects; ambition; goal setting; task difficulty; laboratory experiment; |
| JEL: | C91 D83 D91 I24 |
| Date: | 2019–03–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:148&r=all |
| By: | Esther Mirjam Girsberger (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney); Matthias Krapf (University of Basel, Switzerland); Miriam Rinawi (Swiss National Bank, Switzerland) |
| Abstract: | We study how skills acquired in vocational education and training (VET) affect wages and employment dynamics in Switzerland. We present and estimate a search and matching model for workers with a VET degree who differ in their interpersonal, cognitive and manual skills. Assuming a match productivity which exhibits worker-job complementarity, we estimate how workers’ skills map into job offers, wages and unemployment. Firms value cognitive skills on average almost twice as much as interpersonal and manual skills. Moreover, they prize complementarity in cognitive and interpersonal skills. We estimate average returns to VET skills in hourly wages of 9%. Furthermore, VET improves labour market opportunities through higher job arrival rate and lower job destruction. Workers thus have large benefits from getting a VET degree. |
| Keywords: | Occupational training; labour market search; multidimensional skills. |
| JEL: | E23 J23 J24 J64 |
| Date: | 2019–01–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:55&r=all |
| By: | Alice Solda (Queensland University of Technology; University of Lyon); Changxia Ke (Queensland University of Technology); Lionel Page (Queensland University of Technology; University of Technology Sydney); William von Hippel (University of Queensland) |
| Abstract: | We aim to test the hypothesis that overconfidence arises as a strategy to influence others in social interactions. We design an experiment in which participants are incentivised either to form accurate beliefs about their performance at a test, or to convince a group of other participants that they performed well. We also vary participants’ ability to gather information about their performance. Our results provide, the different empirical links of von Hippel and Trivers’ (2011) theory of strategic overconfidence. |
| Keywords: | Overconfidence; motivated cognition; self-deception; persuasion; information sampling; experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D03 D83 |
| Date: | 2019–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:59&r=all |