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Morale hazard

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  • Fang, Hanming
  • Moscarini, Giuseppe

Abstract

We interpret workers' confidence in their own skills as their morale, and investigate the implication of worker overconfidence on the firm's optimal wage-setting policies. In our model, wage contracts both provide incentives and affect worker morale, by revealing private information of the firm about worker skills. We provide conditions for the non-differentiation wage policy to be profit-maximizing. In numerical examples, worker overconfidence is a necessary condition for the firm to prefer no wage differentiation, so as to preserve some workers' morale; the non-differentiation wage policy itself breeds more worker overconfidence; finally, wage compression is more likely when aggregate productivity is low.
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Suggested Citation

  • Fang, Hanming & Moscarini, Giuseppe, 2005. "Morale hazard," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 749-777, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:52:y:2005:i:4:p:749-777
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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