We analyze a search model of the labor market in which firms and workers meet bilaterally and negotiate over wages in the presence of private information. We show that a fall in labor market frictions induces more aggressive wage bargaining behavior which in turn leads to a costly increase in...

Many people are fired from their jobs for poor performance. However, it is difficult to distinguish whether they are fired because they are not well suited for their job (sorting explanation) or because the firms are trying to provide incentives for effort (incentive explanation). This paper...

We analyze a search model of the labor market in which firms and workers meet bilaterally and negotiate over wages in the presence of private information. We show that a fall in labor market frictions induces more aggressive wage bargaining behavior which in turn leads to a costly increase in...

This paper characterizes optimal income tax and audit schemes in the presence of costly enforcement when the agent is risk averse and not necessarily risk neutral. It is shown that the results under risk-neutrality (Chander and Wilde (1998)) largely hold under risk aversion. We first show that...

Using personnel data, we compare worker productivity under a relative incentive scheme -where pay is based on individual productivity relative to the average productivity of the group- to productivity under piece rates. We find that productivity is at least 50% higher under piece rates. Further...