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Equilibrium Incentive Contracts

Author

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  • Moen, Espen R.
  • Rosén, Åsa

    (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University)

Abstract

We study a labour market in which firms can observe workers’ output but not their effort, and in which a worker’s productivity in a given firm depends on a worker-firm specific component, unobservable for the firm. Firms offer wage contracts that optimally trade off effort and wage costs. As a result, employed workers enjoy rents, which in turn create unemployment. We show that the incentive power of the equilibrium wage contract is constrained socially efficient in the absence of unemployment benefits. We then apply the model to explain the recent increase in performance-pay contracts. Within our model, this can be explained by three different factors: (i) increased importance of non-observable effort, (ii) a fall in the marginal tax rate, (iii) a reduction in the heterogeneity of workers performing the same task. The likely effect of all three factors is an increase in the equilibrium unemployment rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Moen, Espen R. & Rosén, Åsa, 2003. "Equilibrium Incentive Contracts," Working Paper Series 3/2003, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2003_003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Moen, Espen R. & Rosén, Åsa, 2006. "Incentives in Competitive Search Equilibrium and Wage Rigidity," CEPR Discussion Papers 5554, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Karin Mayr-Dorn, 2019. "Does digitalization increase labor market efficiency? Job search and effort on the job with asymmetric information and firm learning," Economics working papers 2019-06, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    3. Ulf Axelson & Philip Bond, 2011. "Investment banking careers: An equilibrium theory of overpaid jobs," FMG Discussion Papers dp690, Financial Markets Group.
    4. Espen R. Moen & Åsa Rosén, 2006. "Equilibrium Incentive Contracts and Efficiency Wages," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(6), pages 1165-1192, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incentives; Contracts; Unemployment; efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts

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