Reciprocity and Wage Undercutting*
نویسندگان
چکیده
It is well-documented that employers refuse to hire workers who offer their services at less than the prevailing wage. The received explanation is that workers are motivated by reciprocity they desire to reward kindness and punish hostility. To refuse an outsider’s under-bid is viewed as a kind choice that is met with good effort; a low wage is viewed as an insult that is met with shirking. We have developed a general theory of reciprocity which in this paper is applied to a wage-setting game played by an employer and two workers. We show that when workers are motivated by reciprocity, equilibrium behaviour accords well with the aforementioned stylized facts. JEL codes: D63, E24, J41
منابع مشابه
The Business Cycle Implications of Reciprocity in Labor Relations
We develop a reciprocity-based model of wage determination and incorporate it into a modern dynamic general equilibrium framework. We estimate the model and find that, among potential determinants of wage policy, rent-sharing (between workers and firms) and a measure of wage entitlement are critical to fit the dynamic responses of hours, wages and inflation to various exogenous shocks. Aggregat...
متن کاملFair Wages and Effort Provision: Combining Evidence from a Choice Experiment and a Field Experiment
T presence of workers who reciprocate higher wages with greater effort can have important consequences for firms and labor markets. Knowledge about the extent and determinants of reciprocal effort choices is, however, incomplete. We investigate the role of fairness perceptions and social preferences in a field experiment in which workers were hired for a one-time job. We show that workers who p...
متن کاملFair Wages and Effort Provision: Combining Evidence from the Lab and the Field
The presence of workers who reciprocate higher wages with greater effort can have important consequences for labor markets. Knowledge about the determinants of reciprocal effort choices is, however, incomplete. We investigate the role of fairness perceptions and social preferences in workers’ performance in a field experiment in which workers were hired for a one-time job. We show that workers ...
متن کاملReciprocity and downward wage rigidity
The employment relationship is to a large extent characterized by incomplete contracts, in which workers have a considerable degree of discretion over the choice of their work effort. This discretion at work kicks in the potential importance of ‘‘gift exchange” or reciprocity between workers and employers in their employment relationship. Built on the seminal work of Akerlof (1980), this paper ...
متن کاملFairness, Reciprocity, and Wage Rigidity
Fairness, Reciprocity, and Wage Rigidity This paper contains a review of empirical work related to wage rigidity, where researchers have collected their own data. The work includes field studies, economic experiments, and psychological surveys. Economists have done the field studies and experiments, and management scientists and experimental psychologists have done the surveys. There is a remar...
متن کامل