IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tiu/tiutis/e9188c19-08a5-41ad-8bbe-b44650cd413a.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incomplete and Asymmetric Surplus Information in Labor Relations

Author

Listed:
  • Hennig-Schmidt, H.
  • Rockenbach, B.
  • Sadrieh, A.

    (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)

Abstract

Numerous laboratory experiments show that workers reciprocate to high wages with high effort, when there is perfect information on the surplus created. Recent field experiments, however, suggest that trust and reciprocity may be lower or absent when the information is incomplete. We report a laboratory experiment with symmetric and asymmetric incomplete surplus information in a “bilateral gift exchange” setting. We find that trust and reciprocity have a significant positive effect on wages, effort and efficiency. But, all three are substantially lower under incomplete than under complete information. The negative impact on wages and efficiency is even greater with information asymmetry.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Hennig-Schmidt, H. & Rockenbach, B. & Sadrieh, A., 2003. "Incomplete and Asymmetric Surplus Information in Labor Relations," Other publications TiSEM e9188c19-08a5-41ad-8bbe-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:tiu:tiutis:e9188c19-08a5-41ad-8bbe-b44650cd413a
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/599380/121.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. Mitzkewitz, Michael & Nagel, Rosemarie, 1993. "Experimental Results on Ultimatum Games with Incomplete Information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 22(2), pages 171-198.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Georg Kirchsteiger & Arno Riedl, 1993. "Does Fairness Prevent Market Clearing? An Experimental Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(2), pages 437-459.
    4. Ulrich Kamecke, 1997. "note: Rotations: Matching Schemes that Efficiently Preserve the Best Reply Structure of a One Shot Game," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 26(3), pages 409-417.
    5. Roth, Alvin E & Murnighan, J Keith, 1982. "The Role of Information in Bargaining: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1123-1142, September.
    6. Simon Gächter & Armin Falk, 2002. "Reputation and Reciprocity: Consequences for the Labour Relation," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(1), pages 1-26, March.
    7. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Sliwka, Dirk, 2003. "Transparency and Reciprocal Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 887, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Fehr, Ernst & Kirchler, Erich & Weichbold, Andreas & Gächter, Simon, 1998. "When Social Norms Overpower Competition: Gift Exchange in Experimental Labor Markets," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(2), pages 324-351, April.
    9. Summers, Lawrence H, 1988. "Relative Wages, Efficiency Wages, and Keynesian Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 383-388, May.
    10. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Işgın, Ebru & Sopher, Barry, 2015. "Information transparency, fairness and labor market efficiency," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 33-39.

    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. Heike Hennig‐Schmidt & Abdolkarim Sadrieh & Bettina Rockenbach, 2010. "In Search of Workers' Real Effort Reciprocity—a Field and a Laboratory Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 817-837, June.
    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. Gagnon, Nickolas & Noussair, C., 2016. "Does Reciprocity Persist Over Time?," Research Memorandum 033, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. Tetsuo Yamamori & Kazuyuki Iwata, 2019. "Endogenous Social Preferences in Bargaining and Contract Enforcement," Working Papers e134, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    5. Chen, Zeyang & Lin, Wanchuan & Meng, Juanjuan, 2022. "Does gift competition hurt? An experimental study of multilateral gift exchange," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 260-275.
    6. Becker, Johannes & Hopp, Daniel & Süß, Karolin, 2020. "How altruistic is indirect reciprocity? - Evidence from gift-exchange games in the lab," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224592, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Simon Gächter & Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "The Impact of Social Comparisons on Reciprocity," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(4), pages 1346-1367, December.
    8. Gose, Karina & Sadrieh, Abdolkarim, 2014. "Strike, coordination, and dismissal in uniform wage settings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 145-158.
    9. Krügel, Jan Philipp & Traub, Stefan, 2018. "Reciprocity and resistance to change: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 95-114.
    10. Gary Charness & Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Jose Maria Perez, 2016. "Social comparisons in wage delegation: experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 433-459, June.
    11. Uri Gneezy & John A List, 2006. "Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1365-1384, September.
    12. Alessandro Rossi, 1999. "Incentives in Managerial Compensation: A Survey of Experimental Research. (Draft Paper)," ROCK Working Papers 003, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 12 Jun 2008.
    13. John A. List, 2006. "The Behavioralist Meets the Market: Measuring Social Preferences and Reputation Effects in Actual Transactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(1), pages 1-37, February.
    14. Bogliacino, Francesco & Grimalda, Gianluca & Pipke, David, 2021. "Kind or contented? An investigation of the gift exchange hypothesis in a natural field experiment in Colombia," Kiel Working Papers 2199, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    15. Gose, Karina, 2013. "Fair wages survive multiple sources of income inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 473-477.
    16. Fortuna Casoria & Arno Riedl, 2013. "Experimental Labor Markets And Policy Considerations: Incomplete Contracts And Macroeconomic Aspects," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 398-420, July.
    17. Fehr, Ernst & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Riedl, Arno, 1998. "Gift exchange and reciprocity in competitive experimental markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-34, January.
    18. Simon Gächter & Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "The Impact of Social Comparisons on Reciprocity," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(4), pages 1346-1367, December.
    19. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    20. Lin, Chung-Cheng & Yang, C.C., 2010. "Reciprocity and downward wage rigidity," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1155-1168, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts

    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:tiu:tiutis:e9188c19-08a5-41ad-8bbe-b44650cd413a. 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: Richard Broekman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about/schools/economics-and-management/ .

    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.