Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Sick Pay Provision in Experimental Labor Markets

Contents:

Author Info

  • Peter Dürsch

    () (University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics)

  • Jörg Oechssler

    () (University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics)

  • Radovan Vadovic

    () (ITAM, Department of Economics)

Abstract

Sick pay is a common provision in most labor contracts. This paper employs an experimental gift-exchange environment to explore two related questions using both managers and undergraduates as subjects. First, do workers reciprocate sick pay in the same way as they reciprocate wage payments? Second, do firms benefit from offering sick pay? Firms may benefit in two different ways: directly, from workers reciprocating higher sick pay with higher efforts; and indirectly, from self-selection of reciprocal workers into contracts with higher sick pay. Our main finding is that the direct effect is rather weak in terms of effort and negative in terms of profits. However, when there is competition among firms for workers, sick pay can become an important advantage. Consequently, competition leads to a higher provision of sick pay relative to a monopsonistic labor market.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/md/awi/forschung/dp476.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 0476.

as in new window
Length: 34 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2008
Date of revision: Oct 2008
Handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0476

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Grabengasse 14, D-69117 Heidelberg
Phone: +49-6221-54 2905
Fax: +49-6221-54 2914
Email:
Web page: http://www.awi.uni-heidelberg.de/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: sick pay; sick leave; experiment; gift exchange;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Ernst Fehr & Alexander Klein & Klaus M Schmidt, 2007. "Fairness and Contract Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 121-154, 01.
  2. Pierre André Chiappori & Bernard Salanié, 2002. "Testing Contract Theory: A Survey of Some Recent Work," CESifo Working Paper Series 738, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter & Georg Kirchsteiger, 2001. "Reciprocity as a Contract Enforcement Device," Levine's Working Paper Archive 563824000000000143, David K. Levine.
  4. Tim A. Barmby & Marco G. Ercolani & John G. Treble, 2002. "Sickness Absence: An International Comparison," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(480), pages F315-F331, June.
  5. Gary Charness, 2004. "Attribution and Reciprocity in an Experimental Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 665-688, July.
  6. Adriana D. Kugler & Gilles Saint-Paul, 2004. "How Do Firing Costs Affect Worker Flows in a World with Adverse Selection?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 553-584, July.
  7. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler, 2004. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets - An Internet Experiment," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 55, Econometric Society.
  8. Henrekson, Magnus & Persson, Mats, 2001. "The Effects on Sick Leave of Changes in the Sickness Insurance System," Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 0444, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 08 Aug 2001.
  9. repec:feb:artefa:0039 is not listed on IDEAS
  10. Fehr, Ernst & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Riedl, Arno, 1993. "Does fairness prevent market clearing? An experimental investigation," Open Access publications from Maastricht University urn:nbn:nl:ui:27-16460, Maastricht University.
  11. David J. Cooper, 1999. "Gaming against Managers in Incentive Systems: Experimental Results with Chinese Students and Chinese Managers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 781-804, September.
  12. Gary Charness & Martin Dufwenberg, 2006. "Promises and Partnership," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1579-1601, November.
  13. repec:feb:artefa:0034 is not listed on IDEAS
  14. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
  15. Coles, Melvyn G. & Treble, John G., 1993. "The price of worker reliability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 149-155.
  16. Fehr, Ernst, et al, 1998. "When Social Norms Overpower Competition: Gift Exchange in Experimental Labor Markets," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(2), pages 324-51, April.
  17. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July.
  18. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
  19. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Patrick Puhani & Katja Sonderhof, 2009. "The Effects of a Sick Pay Reform on Absence and on Health-Related Outcomes," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2009 2009-34, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
  2. Stefan Bauernschuster & Jörg Oechssler & Peter Duersch & Radovan Vadovic, 2009. "Mandatory Sick Pay Provision: A Labor Market Experiment," Jena Economic Research Papers 2009-076, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics.
  3. Casoria Fortuna & Riedl Arno, 2012. "Experimental labor markets and policy considerations: Incomplete contracts and macroeconomic aspects," Research Memoranda 058, Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0476

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Gabi Rauscher).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.