We report the results from a representative survey of human resource managers in 885 Swedish firms. We estimate that during the severe recession of the 1990s, only 1.1 percent of workers took a cut in regular nominal pay. We trace the lack of wage moderation to a combination of exogenous...

We use matched firm-worker panel data from France and Norway to consider observationally equivalent alternatives to the hypothesis that firms share product market rents with their workers in the form of higher wages. After documenting the main stylized facts, we find that neither the main...

We develop a rationale for the payment by firms of a wage premium on marginal, or overtime, weekly hours. We examine wage-hours contracts within the framework of a two-period specific human capital model with asymmetric information. The wage premium serves to achieve contract efficiency. For...

When working together, people engage in non-contractual and informal interactions that constitute the sociology of the group. We use behavioral models and a unique survey of medical groups to analyze how group sociology influences physician incentive pay and behavior. We conclude that informal...

This report delves into fleshing out the contours of the new digital reality of work and corporate service and product delivery. The section reviews the new ideas that dominate corporate conversations around corporate sustainability, environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues that shape...

This paper demonstrates that a principal may optimally remunerate her agents unequally, even if these have equal characteristics. We show this in a simple moral hazard model where agents' efforts are continuous choice variables. Unequal remuneration allows the principal to minimize...

We study the extent to which decisions to expand firm size are associated with increases in subsequent CEO compensation. Controlling for past stock performance, we find a positive correlation between CEO compensation and the CEO's past decisions to increase firm size. This correlation is...

The literature examining the relation between CEOs’ total compensation and earnings management is inconclusive, likely due to unobserved determinants of executive compensation. Our study provides new conclusive evidence on this relation by exploring abnormal compensation, the proportion of pay...

The inability to measure the opportunity cost of labor has plagued analyses of firm-level compensation policies for many years. Using a newly constructed data set of French workers and firms, we estimate the opportunity cost of the employees' time based on a measure of the person-effect in the...