We use an experiment to evaluate the effects of participatory management on firm performance. Participants are randomly assigned roles as managers or workers in firms that generate output via real effort. To identify the causal effect of participation on effort, workers are exogenously assigned...

Not enough is known about the responsiveness of individuals, in particular those who tend to work under different incentives, to changes in marginal tax rates. We ask whether changes in marginal tax rates are less distortionary for workers engaged in a contest. To examine this potential...

The theory of compensating differentials has proven difficult to test with observational data: the consequences of selection, unobserved firm and worker characteristics, and the broader macroeconomic environment complicate most analyses. Instead, we construct experimental, real-effort labor...

In many environments, tournaments can elicit more effort from workers, except perhaps when workers can sabotage each other. Because it is hard to separate effort, ability and output in many real workplace settings, the empirical evidence on the incentive effect of tournaments is thin. There is...