Performance-contingent pay raises productivity, yet in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) only about 16% of workers report receiving performance pay, with the incidence being roughly seven percentage points higher among university graduates than among non-graduates. This coexistence of low...

We conducted a within-subject laboratory experiment in which participants decided whether to experience physical discomfort for charity, with or without additional personal compensation. Acceptance decreased with greater discomfort and increased with both larger charitable donations and personal...

Awards are widely used as incentives. This paper situates awards in the broader incentives landscape and shows how the motivational value of awards can be understood through a framework that considers three sources of value: the tangible component of an award, the social signals it emits, and...

We model firm executives' compensation incentives when ESG metrics are added to their performance-vested contracts. Drawing on multitasking theory, we predict that incentives tied to standard accounting or financial metrics are reduced after introducing ESG metrics to induce executives to...

The optimal design of incentive contracts critically depends on whether the tasks performed by agents are complementary or substitutable, yet empirical evidence on this remains limited. This paper develops a novel empirical strategy to identify complementarities and substitutabilities in tasks,...

Der Beitrag zeigt, wie komplex und vielfältig betriebliche Vergütungssysteme sind, wer welche Sonderzahlungen, Zuschläge und Zusatzleistungen erhält und wie relevant die betriebliche Lohngestaltung für die Mitarbeitermotivation und -bindung sowie die betriebliche Resilienz in Krisenzeiten...