Norwegian workers' job mobility decisions are related to firms' wage policies, but also depend on the national tax schedule. By utilising Norwegian population-wide administrative linked employer-employee data on workers and firms between 2010-2019, we study how the job-to-job turnover of...

Who are more exploited, high-skilled or low-skilled workers? We address this question using the efficiency wage model with skill differentials incorporated. We perform simulations to find the Nash equilibrium numerically, and our central results are the following. First, higher-skilled workers...

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether efficiency wages for production workers have a positive effect on labor productivity in Vietnam's manufacturing SMEs. Design/methodology/approach: The research analyzes the panel data of manufacturing SMEs collected by UNU-Wider in Vietnam in 2011,...

We analyse the implications of habit formation relating to wages in a multi-period efficiency-wage model. If employees have such preferences, their existence provides firms with incentives to raise wages and reduce employment over time. Greater intensity does not necessarily have the same...

We analyse the implications of habit formation relating to wages in a multi-period efficiency-wage model. If employees have such preferences, their existence provides firms with incentives to raise wages and reduce employment over time. Greater intensity does not necessarily have the same...

Many organizations nowadays combine profits with a social mission. This paper reveals a new hidden benefit of the mission: its role in facilitating the emergence of efficiency wages. We show that in a standard gift-exchange principals highly underestimate agents’ reciprocity and, thereby,...

In a Cournot-oligopoly with free but costly entry and business stealing, output per firm is too low and the number of competitors excessive, assuming labor productivity to depend on the number of employees only or to be constant. However, a firm can raise the productivity of its workforce by...

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the effects of fiscal policy in an economy with efficiency wages, consumption taxes and a common income tax rate. Design/methodology/approach: A dynamic general-equilibrium model with the government sector is calibrated to Bulgarian data (1999–2018). Two...

Interindustry wage differentials in wage regressions estimated for individuals have been interpreted as evidence consistent with efficiency wage models. A principal competing explanation is that these differentials are generated by differences across workers in unobserved ability. This paper...

This paper analyzes the ability of a general equilibrium efficiency wage model to account for the estimated response of hours worked and of real wages to a fiscal policy shock. Our key finding is that the model cannot do so unless we make the counterfactual assumption that marginal tax rates are...

We study the incidence of pollution taxes and their impact on unemployment in an analytical general equilibrium efficiency wage model. We find closed-form solutions for the effect of a pollution tax on unemployment, factor prices, and output prices, and we identify and isolate different channels...

Theoretical concepts and empirical tests in one area of economics and finance can provide insights into other areas far removed from the original area of inquiry. We show that efficiency wage theory (EWT) helps explain differences in commercial bank financial performance. EWT is a macroeconomic...

Given asymmetric information, this paper explores the need for non-tenure-track jobs in academia alongside the usual tenure-track positions. It also explains the coexistence of these two types of jobs in research universities as an equilibrium phenomenon. The increased effort needed to produce...

In a Cournot-oligopoly with free but costly entry and business stealing, output per firm is too low and the number of competitors excessive, assuming labor productivity to depend on the number of employees only or to be constant. However, a firm can raise the productivity of its workforce by...

We study the pay of UK universities chief executives ("vice-chancellors") over a ten year period. Although there is a correlation between pay and performance, with better performing institutions paying higher salaries, we find limited evidence that this relationship is causal; that is, we find...

Principal-agent models take outside options, determining participation and incentive constraints, as given. We construct a general equilibrium model where workers' reservation wages and the maximum punishment acceptable before workers quit are instead determined endogenously. We simultaneously...

In this paper we combine two important ingredients - search and matching frictions and "fair wages," and investigate their combined quantitative importance in explaining fluctuations in Bulgarian labor markets. Overall, the calibrated real-business-cycle model for Bulgaria after the introduction...

We analyze the behavior of plant-level real wages and productivity in Turkish manufacturing after the transition to democracy in 1987 and test whether wages under democracy causes productivity. The Turkish experience provides almost an experimental case: real wages in manufacturing increased by...

The implications of (public or private) pre-play communication and information revelation in a labour relationship is not well understood. We address these implications theoretically and experimentally. In our baseline experiments, the employer offers a wage to the worker who may then accept or...

Several efficiency wage theories of wage determination have the property that identical workers are more productive in high wage industries and that the promotion of employment in high wage industries can increase GDP (and some measures of welfare). I argue that while policies to favor high wage...

We explore the implications of trade liberalization in economies with State Owned enterprises (SOEs) and shirking. SOEs are modelled as controlled by the members of the enterprise who determine output and effort levels, while facing output prices and wage rates set by government. Enterprise...

This paper surveys recent developments in the literature on efficiency wage theories of unemployment. Efficiency wage models have in common the property that in equilibrium firms may find it profitable to pay wages in excess of market clearing. High wages can help reduce turnover, elicit worker...

We study worker and firm behavior in an efficiency-wage environment where co-workers' wages may potentially influence a worker's effort. Theoretically, we show that an increase in workers' responsiveness to co-workers' wages should lead profit-maximizing firms to compress wages under quite...

This paper finds that compensation premia and not pension backloading are responsible for the low mobility rates from jobs with pensions. Compensation premia, which may represent efficiency wages, are calculated as the difference in compensation between the current job and the best alternative...

While modern economic theorists have produced a variety of explanations for the failure of wages to fall in the face of unemployment, Keynes emphasis on relative wages has not been reflected in most contemporary discussions. This short paper suggests that relative wage theories in which workers'...

This paper uses efficiency wage theory and the existence of community-based sharing to hypothesize that labor markets in developing countries have multiple equilibria - the same economy can be stuck at different levels of unemployment with different levels of wages. The model is meant for...

We investigate the relationship between the slope of the wage-tenure profile and the level of monitoring across two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data. Our theoretical model predicts that increased monitoring leads to a decline in the slope of the wage-tenure profile. Our...

Much recent thought has been devoted to the macroeconomic importance of the existence of wage contracts. Still, some puzzling features of the most conspicuous form of wage bargaining, that done formally by employers and labor unions, deserve further theoretical attention. Among these important...

This paper examines differences in pay for equally skilled workers indifferent industries. The major finding is that there is substantialdispersion in wages across industries, even after allowing for measured andunmeasured labor quality, working conditions, fringe benefits, transitorydemand...

This paper tests some empirical implications of the general human capital model's explanation of rising wage profiles. At the individual level, the model implies that there will be a negative relationship between the initial wage level and wage growth of young, inexperienced workers. At the...

Efficiency wage models have been criticized because worker malfeasance can be prevented in a pareto efficient manner by requiring workers to post a bond which they lose if they are caught cheating. However, since it is costly to monitor workers and costless to demand a larger bond, firms should...

Efficiency wage models of the effort elicitation type have important implications for labor market dynamics. These models have a wide array of discontinuous sunspot equilibria driven by extraneous variables, in addition to well-behaved equilibria characterized by continuous, slowly adjusting...

In this paper we model the determinants of firm level wages and employment explicitly allowing for firm and worker heterogeneity. Our firms have three types of workers (cadres, skilled and unskilled) and may explicitly choose from among three distinct contracting regimes (strong form efficiency,...

While it is widely established that higher wages attract more productive individuals into teaching, it is unclear if salaries can be used to motivate existing teachers to work harder, or more productively, in any way that affects pupil outcomes. Using teachers' predicted relative wages,...

We analyze the behavior of plant-level real wages and productivity in Turkish manufacturing after the transition to democracy in 1987 and test whether wages under democracy causes productivity. The Turkish experience provides almost an experimental case: real wages in manufacturing increased by...

The gift exchange hypothesis postulates that workers reciprocate above market-clearing wages with above-minimum effort. This hypothesis has received mixed support in dyadic employer-worker relationships. We present a field-experimental test to assess this hypothesis in the context of a triadic...

We derive, compare, and test the predictions of three models of gift exchange: Classical (CGE); Augmented (AGE) based on unexpected wage surprises and first order beliefs; and Belief-based (BGE) that uses second order beliefs to formally model guilt-aversion. Motivated by Akerlof (1982), we also...

We study an important mechanism underlying employee referrals into informal low skilled jobs in developing countries. Employers can exploit social preferences between employee referees and potential workers to improve discipline. The profitability of using referrals increases with referee stakes...

Offering higher wages may enable firms to attract more applicants and screen them more carefully. If firms compete in this way in the labor market, "selection wages" emerge. This note illustrates this wage-setting mechanism. Selection wages may engender unconventional results, such as a pre-tax...