Research summary:Awards are a valuable strategic resource.Motivation theory and the emerging body of empirical literature suggest that awards can have a significant effect on employee motivation and corporate performance, though not always in the intended direction. Awards can also destroy value. The organizational award literature has so far largely neglected this important issue. We develop a...

JEL Classification J33, L85, M52. This study investigated the effects of salary structure, performance requirements, and type of business on the performance of housing agents. The participants in the study survey consisted of the employees of real estate firms in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Restricted and unrestricted regression models were used to compare the goodness-of-fit of the regression models. A...

We study how different payment modes influence the effectiveness of gift exchange as a contract enforcement device. In particular, we analyze how horizontal fairness concerns affect performance and efficiency in an environment characterized by contractual incompleteness. In our experiment, one principal is matched with two agents. The principal pays equal wages in one treatment and can set indi...

We study manager-employee interactions in experiments set in a corporate environment where payoffs depend on employees coordinating at high effort levels; the underlying game being played repeatedly by employees is a weak-link game. In the absence of managerial intervention subjects invariably slip into coordination failure. To overcome a history of coordination failure, managers have two instr...

This paper studies the effect of changes in foreign competition on the incentives faced by U.S. managers through wage structures, promotion profiles and job turnover. We use a panel of executives and measure foreign competition as import penetration. Using tariffs and exchange rates as instrumental variables, we estimate the causal effect of globalization on the labor market outcomes of these w...

Reciprocity and Payment Schemes: When Equality Is Unfair A growing literature stresses the importance of reciprocity, especially for employment relations. In this paper, we study the interaction of different payment modes with reciprocity. In particular, we analyze how equal wages affect performance and efficiency in an environment characterized by contractual incompleteness. In our experiment,...

Despite their theoretical value in tackling principal-agent problems at low cost to firms there is almost no empirical literature on the prevalence and correlates of performance bonds posted by corporate executives. Using data for China we examine their incidence and test propositions from principal-agent theory regarding their correlates. Around one-tenth of corporations deploy performance bon...

On the Relevance and Composition of Gifts within the Firm: Evidence from Field Experiments We investigate the economic relevance and the composition of gifts within a firm where output is contractible. We develop a structural econometric model that identifies workers’ optimal reaction to monetary gifts received from their employer. We estimate the model using data from two separate field experi...

Do Co-Workers’ Wages Matter? Theory and Evidence on Wage Secrecy, Wage Compression and Effort We study worker and firm behavior in an environment where worker effort could depend on co-workers’ wages. Theoretically, we show that an increase in workers’ ‘concerns’ with coworkers’ wages should lead profit-maximizing firms to compress wages under quite general conditions. However, firms should be ...

Article history: Received 22 January 2014 Received in revised form 25 May 2015 Accepted 26 May 2015 Available online 29 May 2015 This paper investigates VC investment stage drifts as explained by the outcomes of managerial incentive schemes under different financial market conditions and past return performances. We exploit a unique dataset containing data for all of the venture capital funds i...