Fixed Wages, Piece Rates, and Intertemporal Productivity: a Study of tree Planters in British Columbia
Abstract
We examine the effects of different sequences of work and rest on the daily productivity of workers who planted trees in the province of British Columbia, Canada, comparing the intertemporal productivity profiles of planters who were paid either fixed wages or piece rates. We find that planters who are paid piece rates produce more, on average, than those who are paid fixed wages, but that the productivity of piece-rate planters falls with the number of consecutive days worked; the fall in productivity is between three and five percent per day. Fixed-wage planters, on the other hand, showed no such decreases.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.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Université Laval - Département d'économique in its series Cahiers de recherche with number 9702.
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: 1997
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:lvl:laeccr:9702
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Pavillon J.A. De Sève, Québec, Québec, G1K 7P4
Phone: (418) 656-5122
Fax: (418) 656-2707
Email:
Web page: http://www.ecn.ulaval.ca
More information through EDIRC
For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Johanne Perron).
Related research
Keywords: Compensation Systems; Productivity; Rest; Recuperation;Other versions of this item:
- Harry J. Paarsch & Bruce S. Shearer, 1997. "Fixed Wages, Piece Rates, and Intertemporal Productivity: A Study of Tree Planters in British Columbia," CIRANO Working Papers 97s-01, CIRANO.
- D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
- J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
- L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-1998-05-25 (All new papers)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease 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.:
- Marcel Boyer, 1997. "Competition and Access in Telecoms: ECPR, Global Price Cap, and Auctions," CIRANO Working Papers 97s-03, CIRANO.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Bandiera, Oriana & Barankay, Iwan & Rasul, Imran, 2004.
"Relative and Absolute Incentives: Evidence on Worker Productivity,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
4431, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Oriana Bandiera (STICERD & LSE, 2004. "Relative and Absolute Incentives: Evidence on Worker Productivity," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 277, Econometric Society.
- Lazear, Edward P., 2003. "Output-Based Pay: Incentives, Retention or Sorting?," IZA Discussion Papers 761, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Edward P. Lazear, 2000.
"Performance Pay and Productivity,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
- Edward P. Lazear, 1996. "Performance Pay and Productivity," NBER Working Papers 5672, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2005.
"Social Preferences and the Response to Incentives: Evidence from Personnel Data,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
MIT Press, vol. 120(3), pages 917-962, August.
- Orana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2005. "Social Preferences and the Response to Incentives: Evidence from Personnel Data," Natural Field Experiments 0014, The Field Experiments Website.
- Edward P. Lazear, 1999. "Output-based Pay: Incentives or Sorting?," NBER Working Papers 7419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lvl:laeccr:9702For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Johanne Perron).
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.

