IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/epa/cepawp/2012-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Work Effort, Firm Closure and Signaling through Excess Capacity Investment

Author

Abstract

This paper puts forward a theoretical rationale for the existence of excess capacity investment in durable capital at the firm level. The model adds an informational issue to the efficiency wage framework by introducing idiosyncratic risk of firm closure to Bowles's (2004) labor discipline model based on contingent contract renewal. As the outcome of the effort bargain is determined, inter alia, by the expectation of future employment rents, the distribution of information about firm closure rates determines the effectiveness of the endogenous enforcement mechanism. The paper investigates the equilibria under perfect and imperfect information and introduces durable capital investment-decisions as a signal to bring about a separating equilibrium when there is private information about firm-specific closure probabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Johann Jaekel, 2012. "Work Effort, Firm Closure and Signaling through Excess Capacity Investment," SCEPA working paper series. 2012-7, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    • Handle: RePEc:epa:cepawp:2012-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/INET_docs/publications/2012/WP_2012-7_Jaeckel_Final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Salop, Steven C, 1979. "A Model of the Natural Rate of Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 117-125, March.
    2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDC's: The Labor Turnover Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 88(2), pages 194-227.
    3. Black, Dan A & Garen, John E, 1991. "Efficiency Wages and Equilibrium Wages," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 29(3), pages 525-540, July.
    4. William D. Ferguson, 2004. "Worker Motivation, Wages, and Bilateral Market Power in Nonunion Labor Markets," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 527-547, Fall.
    5. Solow, Robert M., 1979. "Another possible source of wage stickiness," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 79-82.
    6. Samuel Bowles., 1988. "Capitalist Technology: Endogenous Claim Enforcement and the Choice of Technique," Economics Working Papers 8878, University of California at Berkeley.
    7. Bowles, Samuel, 1988. "Capitalist Technology: Endogenous Claim Enforcement and the Choice of Technique," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt380577jp, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    8. George Baker & Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 2001. "Bringing the Market inside the Firm?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 212-218, May.
    9. Chatrerji, Monojit & Sparks, Roger, 1991. "Real wages, productivity, and the cycle: An efficiency wage model," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 495-510.
    10. Gordon, David M, 1990. "Who Bosses Whom? The Intensity of Supervision and the Discipline of Labor," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 28-32, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Tatiane Almeida De Menezes & Isabel Raposo, 2011. "Wage Differentials By Firm Size: Theefficiency Wage Test In Brazil," Anais do XXXVIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 38th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 236, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    2. Campbell, Carl M., 2014. "The formation of wage expectations in the effort and quit decisions of workers," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 313-322.
    3. Ekkehart Schlicht, 2005. "Hiring Standards And Labour Market Clearing," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(2), pages 263-279, May.
    4. Campbell III, Carl M., 2010. "Deriving the wage-wage and price-price Phillips curves from a model with efficiency wages and imperfect information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 242-245, May.
    5. Franz, Wolfgang, 1993. "Unvollkommene Arbeitsmärkte in makroökonomischen Modellen: Eine Übersicht," Discussion Papers 1, University of Konstanz, Center for International Labor Economics (CILE).
    6. Campbell III, Carl M., 2008. "An efficiency wage approach to reconciling the wage curve and the Phillips curve," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1388-1415, December.
    7. Isabel Raposo & Tatiane Menezes, 2011. "Wage Differentials By Firm Size: The Efficiency Wage Test In A Developing Country," ERSA conference papers ersa11p1465, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Sophia Delipalla & Peter Sanfey, 2001. "Commodity Taxes, Wage Determination, and Profits," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 3(2), pages 203-217, April.
    9. Strobl, Eric & Walsh, Frank, 2007. "Estimating the shirking model with variable effort," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 623-637, June.
    10. Campbell, Carl III, 1995. "A cross-industry time-series analysis of quits," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 53-72.
    11. Andreas P. Georgiadis, 2006. "Is there a Wage-Supervision Trade-Off? Efficiency Wages Evidence From the 1990 British Workplace Industrial Relations Survey," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 06/152, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    12. Joao Ricardo Faria, 1998. "Supervision and Effort in an Intertemporal Efficiency Wage Model: The Role of the Solow Condition," Studies in Economics 9814, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    13. Emmanuel SENZU, 2018. "Investment Attraction, Competition And Growth; Theoretical Perspective In The Context Of Africa," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 9(1), pages 92-102.
    14. Elias Dinopoulos & Laixun Zhao, 2007. "Child Labor and Globalization," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(3), pages 553-579.
    15. Goldsmith, Arthur H. & Veum, Jonathan R. & Darity, William Jr., 2000. "Working hard for the money? Efficiency wages and worker effort," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 351-385, August.
    16. Jean‐Pierre Danthine & André Kurmann, 2007. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Reciprocity in Labor Relations," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(4), pages 857-881, December.
    17. Darin Lee & Nicholas G. Rupp, 2007. "Retracting a Gift: How Does Employee Effort Respond to Wage Reductions?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(4), pages 725-761.
    18. Jhon Alexander Méndez Sayago & Hugo Alfonso Hernández Escolar, 2014. "Relación de largo plazo y análisis de causalidad y sensibilidad entre los salarios reales y la productividad laboral en el sector manufacturero a partir de cifras de los departamentos en Colombia," Revista Finanzas y Politica Economica, Universidad Católica de Colombia, vol. 6(2), pages 341-366, September.
    19. Belloc, Filippo & Burdin, Gabriel & Cattani, Luca & Ellis, William & Landini, Fabio, 2022. "Coevolution of job automation risk and workplace governance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    20. Ernesto Screpanti, 2000. "Wages, Employment, and Militancy: A Simple Model and Some Empirical Tests," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 171-196, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    efficiency wage;

    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:epa:cepawp:2012-7. 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: Bridget Fisher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenewus.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.