IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/0736.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How do bonus cap and malus affect risk and effort choice Insight from a lab experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Harris, Qun

    (Bank of England)

  • Mercieca, Analise

    (Bank of England)

  • Soane, Emma

    (Bank of England)

  • Tanaka, Misa

    (Bank of England)

Abstract

We conducted a lab experiment to examine how bonus caps and malus affect individuals’ choices of risk and effort. We find that a bonus structure that rewards individuals proportionally to realised investment returns, but does not penalise negative returns, encourages risk-taking; while a bonus cap and malus mitigate risk-taking. However, the difference in risk-taking between the bonus cap and malus treatment groups and the proportional bonus group weakened significantly when the participants’ bonus was conditional on hitting an absolute or relative performance target. We also find some evidence that the bonus cap discourages project search effort relative to the proportional bonus, whereas the difference in the levels of effort between the malus treatment group and the proportional bonus group was not statistically significant.

Suggested Citation

  • Harris, Qun & Mercieca, Analise & Soane, Emma & Tanaka, Misa, 2018. "How do bonus cap and malus affect risk and effort choice Insight from a lab experiment," Bank of England working papers 736, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2018/how-do-bonus-cap-and-malus-affect-risk-and-effort-choice-insight-from-a-lab-experiment.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eriksson, Tor & Poulsen, Anders & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2009. "Feedback and incentives: Experimental evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 679-688, December.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk, 2011. "Performance Pay and Multidimensional Sorting: Productivity, Preferences, and Gender," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 556-590, April.
    3. Shawn Cole & Martin Kanz & Leora Klapper, 2015. "Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(2), pages 537-575, April.
    4. repec:cup:judgdm:v:1:y:2006:i::p:48-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Keeley, Michael C, 1990. "Deposit Insurance, Risk, and Market Power in Banking," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1183-1200, December.
    6. Thanassoulis, John & Tanaka, Misa, 2018. "Optimal pay regulation for too-big-to-fail banks," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 83-97.
    7. Tyran, Jean-Robert & Andersson, Ola & Holm, Håkan J. & Wengström, Erik, 2013. "Risking Other People?s Money," CEPR Discussion Papers 9743, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Steven D. Levitt & Susanne Neckermann, 2014. "What field experiments have and have not taught us about managing workers," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 30(4), pages 639-657.
    9. Bruggen, Alexander & Strobel, Martin, 2007. "Real effort versus chosen effort in experiments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 232-236, August.
    10. Frank Hartmann & Sergeja Slapničar, 2015. "An experimental study of the effects of negative, capped and deferred bonuses on risk taking in a multi-period setting," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 19(4), pages 875-896, November.
    11. Angeli, Marilena & Gitay, Shahzad, 2015. "Bonus regulation: aligning reward with risk in the banking sector," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 55(4), pages 322-333.
    12. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2012. "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 50-58.
    13. Rochet, Jean-Charles, 1992. "Capital requirements and the behaviour of commercial banks," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 1137-1170, 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


    Cited by:

    1. Bholat, David & Broughton, Nida & Ter Meer, Janna & Walczak, Eryk, 2019. "Enhancing central bank communications using simple and relatable information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-15.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harris, Qun & Tanaka, Misa & Soane, Emma, 2020. "Does bonus cap curb risk taking? An experimental study of relative performance pay and bonus regulation," Bank of England working papers 882, Bank of England.
    2. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    3. Emanuela Lezzi & Piers Fleming & Daniel John Zizzo, 2015. "Does it matter which effort task you use? A comparison of four effort tasks when agents compete for a prize," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 15-05, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    4. Sheedy, Elizabeth & Zhang, Le & Liao, Yin, 2023. "Deferred pay: Compliance and productivity with self-selection," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Mikel Bedayo & Gabriel Jiménez & José-Luis Peydró & Raquel Vegas, 2020. "Screening and Loan Origination Time: Lending Standards, Loan Defaults and Bank Failures," Working Papers 1215, Barcelona School of Economics.
    6. Brice Corgnet & Roberto Hernán Gonzalez & Ricardo Mateo, 2015. "Cognitive Reflection and the Diligent Worker: An Experimental Study of Millennials," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(11), pages 1-13, November.
    7. Ernest Dautovic, 2019. "Has Regulatory Capital Made Banks Safer? Skin in the Game vs Moral Hazard," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 19.03, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    8. Ongena, Steven & Savaşer, Tanseli & Şişli Ciamarra, Elif, 2022. "CEO incentives and bank risk over the business cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    9. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    10. Hakenes, Hendrik & Schnabel, Isabel, 2011. "Bank size and risk-taking under Basel II," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 1436-1449, June.
    11. Georges Dionne, 2003. "The Foundationsof Banks' Risk Regulation: A Review of Literature," THEMA Working Papers 2003-46, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    12. Guowei Cui & Vasilis Sarafidis & Takashi Yamagata, 2020. "IV Estimation of Spatial Dynamic Panels with Interactive Effects: Large Sample Theory and an Application on Bank Attitude," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 11/20, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    13. Ludwig, Sandra & Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde & Thoma, Carmen, 2017. "Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 31-46.
    14. Jokipii, Terhi & Milne, Alistair, 2011. "Bank capital buffer and risk adjustment decisions," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 165-178, August.
    15. Gary Charness & Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Jose Maria Perez, 2016. "Social comparisons in wage delegation: experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 433-459, June.
    16. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin & Janna Heider, 2015. "A Study of Outcome Reporting Bias Using Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 61(1), pages 239-262.
    17. Brice Corgnet & Roberto Hernán-González, 2019. "Revisiting the Trade-off Between Risk and Incentives: The Shocking Effect of Random Shocks?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1096-1114, March.
    18. Hernán Bejarano & Brice Corgnet & Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, 2019. "Labor Contracts, Gift-Exchange and Reference Wages: Your Gift Need Not Be Mine!," Working Papers 19-26, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    19. John, June Park, 2017. "Gender differences and the effect of facing harder competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 201-222.
    20. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bonus cap; bonus regulation; incentive pay;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0736. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.