A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of...

The impact of wage increases on job satisfaction is explored theoretically and empirically. To do this, we apply a utility function that rises with the absolute wage level as well as with wage increases. It is shown that when employees can influence their wages by exerting effort, myopic utility...

We investigate the use of performance appraisal (PA) in German Firms. First, we derive hypotheses on individual and job based determinants of PA usage. Based on a representative German data set on individual employees, we test these hypotheses and also explore the impact of PA on performance pay...

We investigate the effects of works councils on employees' wages and job satisfaction in general and for subgroups with respect to sex and occupational status. Making use of a German representative sample of employees, we find that employees, who move to a firm with a works council, report...

Based on a German representative sample of employees we explore the relevance and development of further training in private sector firms. We focus on formal training and explore possible individual and job-based determinants of its incidence. We also show changes over time during a 20 year...

Evidence shows that working time mismatch, i.e. the difference between actual and desired working hours, is negatively related to employees' job satisfaction. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the potential moderating effect of working time autonomy on this...

This paper analyzes the role of works councils as gatekeepers safeguarding employee's interests in the adoption of monitoring practices. We first introduce a formal model predicting that (i) the introduction of monitoring practices leads to a stronger increase (or weaker decrease) in job...

We assemble two reference point based concepts of utility in our empirical study: the own previous status quo and social comparisons. We explore the relative relevance of these concepts for total compensation as well as for different parts of the compensation package of managers. Making use of a...

We combine status quo and social comparison considerations and investigate whether relative wage increases in the sense of differences between individual wage increases and wage increases of comparable employees are related to managers' job satisfaction. Using a panel data set of managers in the...

We investigate whether job autonomy is associated with employees' sickness absence. We can make use of the representative German Study of Mental Health at Work data. In line with our theoretical considerations, we do find evidence for an inverse relation between employees' job autonomy and days...