Social preferences and incentives in the workplace [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Steffen Altmann

Steffen Altmann

Informations

• Publié par: rheinische_friedrich-wilhelms-universitat_bonn
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• Langue: English

Extrait

Social Preferences and Incentives in the
Workplace
Inaugural-Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors
der Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften
durch die
Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakult˜at
der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit˜at
Bonn
vorgelegt von
Stefien Altmann
aus Villingen-Schwenningen
Bonn 2009Dekan: Prof. Dr. Christian Hillgruber
Erstreferent: Prof. Dr. Armin Falk
Zweitreferent: Prof. Paul Heidhues, Ph.D.
Tag der mundlic˜ hen Prufung:˜ 28.07.2009
Diese Dissertation ist auf dem Hochschulschriftenserver der ULB Bonn
(http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/diss online) elektronisch publiziert.Acknowledgments
Firstandforemost,IamgratefultoArminFalkforhisexcellentadvice,inexhaustible
support and flrm guidance throughout the last years. When writing my diploma
thesis,Icameacrosshisdissertationwhichawakedmyinterestintheexcitingfleldof
\behavioral" labor economics. I was impressed about the originality and creativity
with which he addressed important questions in an innovative way. Working with
him, however, exceeded all my expectations.
Paul Heidhues, Matthias Kr˜akel and several other faculty members of the Bonn
Graduate School of Economics (BGSE) have always been ready to discuss ideas and
provided very helpful comments during various stages of this dissertation.
I want to thank my co-authors Johannes Abeler, Thomas Dohmen, David Hufi-
man, Sebastian Kube, and Matthias Wibral. Collaborating, discussing, conducting
experiments, analyzing data, and writing papers with them has been great fun.
Financial support from the DFG (through GRK 629), the BGSE, the Institute
for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich, and the
for the Study of Labor (IZA) is gratefully acknowledged. I especially thank Urs
Schweizer, Georg N˜oldeke and Jurgen˜ von Hagen for their continuous engagement
in making the BGSE such a stimulating place to start doing economic research.
Even the BGSE, however, could not be such a great place without great fellow
students. Johannes Abeler, An Chen, Oliver Fries, Jurgen˜ Gaul, Sotiris Georganas,
Simon Junker, Lars Koch, Julia Nafziger, Michal Paluch, Marc Schifibauer, David
Schr˜oder, Marcus Sonntag, Xia Su, Matthias Wibral, and Michael Z˜ahringer were
the best ‘year 2003 graduate class’ I could imagine.
IZA provided and continues to provide a very inspiring atmosphere for doing
research. I am glad to be part of such a great team. In particular, I would like to
thank Franziska Tausch for excellent research assistance on various projects of this
dissertation. I owe great thanks to BonnEconLab, and especially to Heike Hennig-
Schmidt whose efiort and support allows me to conduct economic experiments in
a \perfectly controlled" environment. I also want to thank the 792 anonymous (!)
subjects whose behavior will be discussed in the following pages.
ManypeopleinsideandoutsidetheUniversityofBonnmadesurethatlife\after
research" has also been a great pleasure. Apart from my fellow students, these
people include Almira Buzaushina, Zeno Enders, Sebastian Goerg, Gesine Gullner,˜
Johannes Kaiser, Carolin Kie…, Simon Vehovec, Gari Walkowitz, and Markus Zink.
Most of all, I thank my family for their encouragement, patience, and uncondi-
tional support in everything I do.Contents
Introduction 1
1 Do the Reciprocal Trust Less? 13
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 Experimental Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4 Discussion and Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2 When Equality is Unfair 21
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2 Experimental Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2.1 Design and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2.2 Behavioral Predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3.1 Efiort Choices and E–ciency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3.2 Wage Setting and Monetary Incentives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3.3 The Importance of Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3.4 Dynamics of High-Efiort and Low-Efiort Providers. . . . . . . 42
2.3.5 The Role of Intentions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
i3 Contract Enforcement and Involuntary Unemployment 51
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.2 Experimental Design and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2.1 The Market Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2.2 The Work Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.2.3 Parameters and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3 Behavioral Predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.1 Money-Maximizing Behavior of all Players . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.2 Fair-Minded Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4.1 Unemployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4.2 Contracts in the Difierent Market Environments . . . . . . . . 69
3.4.3 Determinants and Consequences of Job Rationing . . . . . . . 73
3.5 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4 Behavior in Multi-Stage Elimination Tournaments 85
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.2 A Simple Model of Multi-Stage Elimination Tournaments . . . . . . . 89
4.3 Experimental Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.3.1 Treatments and Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.3.2 Experimental Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4.1 Behavior in the One-Stage Tournament . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4.2 Testing Behavioral Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.4.3 Wage Structures in Two-Stage Tournaments . . . . . . . . . . 99
ii4.4.4 Testing Incentive Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.5 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Appendices 117
A.1 Instructions for Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
B.2 for Chapter 2 (EWT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
C.3 Predictions for Fair-Minded Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
C.3.1 Strictly Egalitarian Fairness Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
C.3.2 Relation-Speciflc Egalitarian Fairness Preferences . . . . . . . 127
C.4 Instructions for Chapter 3 (IC Treatment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
D.5 for Chapter 4 (TS Treatment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
D.6 Schedule of Efiort Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
D.7 Elicitation of Risk Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
iiiivList of Figures
1.1 Average amount sent by selflsh, intermediate, and reciprocal players . 16
2.1 Average efiort per period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2 Frequency of efiort choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.3 Average wage for a given efiort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4 Magnitude of efiort reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.5 Simulation of agents who adopt to equity-norm violations . . . . . . . 42
2.6 Efiort decisions of high-efiort and low-efiort providers . . . . . . . . . 44
2.7 Average efiort per treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1 Average unemployment per period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2 Contract ofiers and accepted contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.3 Average wage per period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.4 Average efiort per period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.5 Firm proflts per period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.1 Frequency of efiort choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
vvi