IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1422.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Morale Hazard

Author

Listed:

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanming Fang & Giuseppe Moscarini, 2003. "Morale Hazard," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1422, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1422
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d14/d1422.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1990. "The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 255-283.
    2. Ulrike Malmendier & Geoffrey Tate, 2005. "CEO Overconfidence and Corporate Investment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2661-2700, December.
    3. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1999. "Diversity of Opinion and Financing of New Technologies," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 8(1-2), pages 68-89, January.
    4. Olivier Compte & Andrew Postlewaite, 2004. "Confidence-Enhanced Performance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1536-1557, December.
    5. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    6. Solow, Robert M., 1979. "Another possible source of wage stickiness," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 79-82.
    7. Kreps, David M, 1997. "Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 359-364, May.
    8. Fang, Hanming & Moscarini, Giuseppe, 2005. "Morale hazard," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 749-777, May.
    9. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2002. "Perceptions of Equity and the Distribution of Income," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(2), pages 249-288, Part.
    10. Morris, Stephen, 1994. "Trade with Heterogeneous Prior Beliefs and Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(6), pages 1327-1347, November.
    11. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 489-520.
    12. Dan Lovallo & Colin Camerer, 1999. "Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 306-318, March.
    13. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    14. George Baker & Michael Gibbs & Bengt Holmstrom, 1994. "The Wage Policy of a Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 921-955.
    15. Alessandro Lizzeri & Margaret A. Meyer & Nicola Persico, 2002. "The Incentive Effects of Interim Performance Evaluations," Penn CARESS Working Papers 592e9328faf6e775bf331e1c0, Penn Economics Department.
    16. Prendergast, Canice, 1992. "Career development and specific human capital collection," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 207-227, September.
    17. Morris, Stephen, 1995. "The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 227-253, October.
    18. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-580, June.
    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. Rebitzer, James B. & Taylor, Lowell J., 2011. "Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 8, pages 701-772, Elsevier.
    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. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Karantounias, Anastasios G., 2019. "Overconfidence, subjective perception and pricing behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 107-132.
    4. Jeremy Clark & Lana Friesen, 2009. "Overconfidence in Forecasts of Own Performance: An Experimental Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 229-251, January.
    5. de la Rosa, Leonidas Enrique, 2011. "Overconfidence and moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 429-451.
    6. Kirsten Bregn, 2013. "Detrimental Effects of Performance-Related Pay in the Public Sector? On the Need for a Broader Theoretical Perspective," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 21-35, March.
    7. Luís Santos-Pinto, 2012. "Labor Market Signaling and Self-Confidence: Wage Compression and the Gender Pay Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(4), pages 873-914.
    8. Zhang, Jingwen, 2017. "The adaptation of management control systems to different agents," Other publications TiSEM 647192e2-8d0d-4265-8bc1-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Sandroni, Alvaro & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Overconfidence and asymmetric information: The case of insurance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 149-165.
    10. Michael L. Anderson & Fangwen Lu, 2017. "Learning to Manage and Managing to Learn: The Effects of Student Leadership Service," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3246-3261, October.
    11. King-King Li, 2022. "Memory Recall Bias of Overconfident and Underconfident Individuals after Feedback," Post-Print hal-03841235, HAL.
    12. Dirk Sliwka, 2007. "Trust as a Signal of a Social Norm and the Hidden Costs of Incentive Schemes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 999-1012, June.
    13. Silvia Dominguez‐Martinez & Otto H. Swank, 2009. "A Simple Model of Self‐Assessment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(539), pages 1225-1241, July.
    14. Rudolf Winter‐Ebmer & Josef Zweimüller, 1999. "Intra‐firm Wage Dispersion and Firm Performance," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 555-572, November.
    15. Zahra Murad & Martin Sefton & Chris Starmer, 2016. "How do risk attitudes affect measured confidence?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 21-46, February.
    16. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2005. "La dispersion salariale stimule-t-elle la performance d'une firme ?," Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(2), pages 63-70.
    17. Paul, Maureen, 2006. "A cross-section analysis of the fairness-of-pay perception of UK employees," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 243-267, April.
    18. Roland Bénabou, 2013. "Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 429-462.
    19. Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Labor Market Signaling and Self-Confidence: Wage Compression and the Gender Pay Gap N.B.: This paper replaces Nr 10.07 "Labor Market Signaling with Overconfident Workers" (June 2010)," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 11.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    20. Paul Hek & Daniel Vuuren, 2011. "Are older workers overpaid? A literature review," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(4), pages 436-460, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overconfidence; Worker morale; Wage-setting policies;
    All these keywords.

    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

    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:cwl:cwldpp:1422. 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: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.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.