Performance pay and worker cooperation: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment

被引:44
作者
Burks, Stephen [2 ,3 ]
Carpenter, Jeffrey [3 ,4 ]
Goette, Lorenz [1 ,3 ]
机构
[1] Fed Reserve Bank Boston, Res Dept, Boston, MA 02210 USA
[2] Univ Minnesota, Div Social Sci, Morris, MN 56267 USA
[3] Inst Study Labor IZA, D-53113 Bonn, Germany
[4] Middlebury Coll, Dept Econ, Middlebury, VT 05753 USA
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
Field experiment; Social preferences; Compensation schemes; Sorting; PREFERENCES;
D O I
10.1016/j.jebo.2008.02.012
中图分类号
F [经济];
学科分类号
02 ;
摘要
We report the results of an artefactual field experiment with bicycle messengers in Switzerland and the United States. Messenger work is individualized enough that firms can choose to condition pay on it, but significant externalities in messenger behavior nonetheless give their on-the-job interactions the character of a social dilemma. Second-mover behavior in our sequential prisoner's dilemma allows us to characterize the cooperativeness of our participants. Among messengers, we find that employees at firms that pay for performance are significantly less cooperative than those at firms that pay hourly wages or who are members of cooperatives. To examine whether the difference is the result of treatment or selection we exploit the fact that firm type is location-specific in Switzerland and that entering messengers must work in performance pay firms in the U.S. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
引用
收藏
页码:458 / 469
页数:12
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