IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/062.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Work motivation, institutions, and performance

Author

Listed:
  • Simon G�chter
  • Armin Falk

Abstract

In this paper we study experimentally four remedies to overcome inefficiencies that arise from the incompleteness of contracts. These remedies are reciprocity, repeated game effects, social embeddedness, and incentive contracts. In our baseline treatment we find that reciprocity is a powerful contract enforcement device. A second experiment establishes that repeated game effects interact with reciprocity in a complementary way, i.e., efficiency is increased compared to our baseline. Adding social approval incentives does not contribute significantly to efficiency. Finally, we show that explicit incentive contracts may have perverse effects in the sense that they "crowd out� reciprocity and therefore reduce efficiency compared to the baseline. In our concluding section we discuss the relation of our findings to the recent literature on "intrinsic motivation�.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon G�chter & Armin Falk, "undated". "Work motivation, institutions, and performance," IEW - Working Papers 062, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.uzh.ch/apps/workingpapers/wp/iewwp062.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gneezy, Uri & Rustichini, Aldo, 2000. "A Fine is a Price," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. 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.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter & Georg Kirchsteiger, 1997. "Reciprocity as a Contract Enforcement Device: Experimental Evidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 833-860, July.
    4. Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg, 2000. "Reciprocity and wage undercutting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4-6), pages 1069-1078, May.
    5. Baker, George P & Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1988. " Compensation and Incentives: Practice vs. Theory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 593-616, July.
    6. Falk, Armin & Fischbacher, Urs, 2006. "A theory of reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 293-315, February.
    7. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    8. Bruno S. Frey, 1997. "Not Just for the Money," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1183.
    9. 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.
    10. Vital Anderhub & Simon Gächter & Manfred Königstein, 2002. "Efficient Contracting and Fair Play in a Simple Principal-Agent Experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 5(1), pages 5-27, June.
    11. MacLeod, W Bentley & Malcomson, James M, 1998. "Motivation and Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 388-411, June.
    12. Falk, Armin & Gachter, Simon & Kovacs, Judit, 1999. "Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives in a repeated game with incomplete contracts," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 251-284, June.
    13. Schlicht, Ekkehart, 1998. "On Custom in the Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292241.
    14. Leibenstein, Harvey, 1979. "A Branch of Economics is Missing: Micro-Micro Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 477-502, June.
    15. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    16. Herbert A. Simon, 1991. "Organizations and Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 25-44, Spring.
    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. Andrej Angelovski & Daniela Cagno & Daniela Grieco & Werner Güth, 2019. "Trusting versus monitoring: an experiment of endogenous institutional choices," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 329-355, December.
    2. Aleksander Berentsen & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2003. "Money and the Gains from Trade," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(1), pages 263-297, February.
    3. Lanfranchi, Joseph & Narcy, Mathieu & Larguem, Makram, 2009. "Would you accept this job? An evaluation of the decision utility of workers in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors," MPRA Paper 16359, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Dickinson, David & Villeval, Marie-Claire, 2008. "Does monitoring decrease work effort?: The complementarity between agency and crowding-out theories," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 56-76, May.
    5. Armin Falk, 2003. "Homo Oeconomicus versus Homo Reciprocans: Ansätze für ein neues Wirtschaftspolitisches Leitbild?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(1), pages 141-172, February.
    6. Reto Foellmi & Urs Meister, 2005. "Product-Market Competition in the Water Industry: Voluntary Non-discriminatory Pricing," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 115-135, June.
    7. Schenk-Hoppe, Klaus Reiner & Schmalfu[ss], Bjorn, 2001. "Random fixed points in a stochastic Solow growth model," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 19-30, September.
    8. Aleksander Berentsen & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2004. "Money and Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 915-944.
    9. Marie Claire Villeval, 2005. "Nouvelles conditions de travail : satisfaction ou résignation ?," Post-Print halshs-00157177, HAL.
    10. Berentsen, Aleksander & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2002. "On the efficiency of monetary exchange: how divisibility of money matters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(8), pages 1621-1649, November.
    11. Sara Depedri & Ermanno Tortia & Maurizio Carpita, 2010. "Incentives, job satisfaction and performance: empirical evidence in italian social enterprises," Euricse Working Papers 1012, Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).

    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. Simon Gaechter & Esther Kessler & Manfred Koenigstein, 2011. "The roles of incentives and voluntary cooperation for contractual compliance," Discussion Papers 2011-06, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gaechter, "undated". "Do Incentive Contracts Crowd out Voluntary Cooperation?," IEW - Working Papers 034, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    3. Sliwka, Dirk, 2003. "On the Hidden Costs of Incentive Schemes," IZA Discussion Papers 844, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    5. Sprinkle, Geoffrey B., 2003. "Perspectives on experimental research in managerial accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 287-318.
    6. 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.
    7. Alexander S. Kritikos & Jonathan H. W. Tan, 2009. "Indenture as a Self‐Enforced Contract Device: An Experimental Test," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(3), pages 857-872, January.
    8. 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.
    9. Simon Gaechter & Armin Falk, 2001. "Reputation or Reciprocity? An Experimental Investigation," CESifo Working Paper Series 496, CESifo.
    10. Kritikos, Alexander S. & Tan, Jonathan H. W., 2005. "Indenture as a Commitment Device in Self-Enforced Contracts: An Experimental Test," Discussion Papers 241, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
    11. Tetsuo Yamamori & Kazuyuki Iwata, 2023. "Wage claim detracts reciprocity in labor relations: experimental study of gift exchange games," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 18(3), pages 573-597, July.
    12. Dennis Dittrich & Martin G. Kocher, 2006. "Monitoring and Pay: An Experiment on Employee Performance under Endogenous Supervision," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 06-098/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    14. Abeler, Johannes & Altmann, Steffen & Kube, Sebastian & Wibral, Matthias, 2006. "Reciprocity and Payment Schemes: When Equality Is Unfair," Ratio Working Papers 109, The Ratio Institute.
    15. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Sliwka, Dirk, 2005. "Incentives, Decision Frames, and Motivation Crowding Out – An Experimental Investigation," IZA Discussion Papers 1758, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Boosey, Luke & Goerg, Sebastian, 2020. "The timing of discretionary bonuses – effort, signals, and reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 254-280.
    17. Johannes Becker & Daniel Hopp & Karolin Süß, 2020. "How Altruistic Is Indirect Reciprocity? - Evidence from Gift-Exchange Games in the Lab," CESifo Working Paper Series 8423, CESifo.
    18. Lin, Chung-Cheng & Yang, C.C., 2010. "Reciprocity and downward wage rigidity," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1155-1168, December.
    19. Kocher, Martin & Dittrich, Dennis, 2006. "Monitoring and Pay: An Experiment on Employee under Endogenous Supervision," CEPR Discussion Papers 5962, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg, 2019. "Modelling kindness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 228-234.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    principal agent; incomplete contracts; experiments; work motivation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zur:iewwpx:062. 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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.