Der Einfluss unterschiedlicher Anreiztypen auf die intrinsische Motivation ist seit Jahren Gegenstand einer heftigen Kontroverse. Der vorliegende Beitrag erweitert diese Diskussion, indem er die Analyse auf zwei weitere Kernelemente von Anreizsystemen, die Ausgestaltung der Bemessungsgrundlage...

A worker's utility may increase with his income, but envy can make his utility decline with his employer's income. This article uses a principal-agent model to study profit-maximizing contracts when a worker envies his employer. Envy tightens the worker's participation constraint and so calls...

Civil servants have a bad reputation of being lazy. However, citizens' personal experiences with civil servants appear to be significantly better. We develop a model of an economy in which workers differ in laziness and in public service motivation, and characterise optimal incentive contracts...

This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make firms in a competitive labor market act as monopsonists, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the...

We introduce a concept of emotions that emerge when workers compare their own performance with a given standard or with the performances of co-workers. Assuming heterogeneity among the workers the interplay of emotions and incentives is analyzed by focusing on three incentive schemes that are...

We introduce a concept of emotions that emerge when workers compare their own performance with a given standard or with the performances of co-workers. Assuming heterogeneity among the workers the interplay of emotions and incentives is analysed by focusing on three incentive schemes that are...

We derive the optimal contract between a principal and a liquidity-constrained agent in a stochastically repeated environment. The contract comprises a court-enforceable explicit bonus rule and an implicit fixed salary promise that must be self-enforcing. Since the agent's rent increases with...

Consider a principal-agent relationship in which more effort by the agent raises the likelihood of success. Does rewarding success, i.e., paying a bonus, increase effort in this case? I find that bonuses have not only an incentive but also an income effect. Overall, bonuses paid for success may...

We suggest a parsimonious dynamic agency model in which workers have status concerns. A firm is a promotion hierarchy in which a worker's status depends on past performance. We investigate the optimality of two types of promotion hierarchies: (i) internal labor markets, in which agents have a...

Civil servants have a reputation for being lazy. However, people's personal experiences with civil servants frequently run counter to this stereotype. We develop a model of an economy in which workers differ in laziness and in public service motivation, and characterise optimal incentive...