Fixed-term Employment, Work Organization and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from German Individual-Level Data.

The present paper examines the joint effect of fixed-term employment and work organization on job satisfaction using individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel GSOEP). Specifically, we analyze whether workers who are heterogeneous in terms of the type of working contract (fixed-term vs. permanent) do also differ with regard to job satisfaction, when they perform under comparable work organizational conditions. Such information would be quite valuable for employers, because they can learn about the responsiveness of heterogeneous workers to innovative work organizational practices. For this purpose, we at first estimate a linear fixed effects model, thereby controlling for unobserved time-constant characteristics. In a second step, we account for potential remaining endogeneity by combining the fixed effects approach with a two-stage estimation strategy. Our empirical results show that in terms of job satisfaction fixed-term workers and their permanent counterparts respond differently to a number of organizational practices including task diversity, employee involvement, social relations at work, general working conditions, and career prospects. The results may be used by employers to improve their concept of diversity management and specifically the job design of heterogeneous workers.

Fairness Spillovers - The Case of Taxation

It is standardly assumed that individuals adjust to perceived unfairness or norm violations in precisely the same area or relationship where the original offense has occurred. However, grievances over being exposed to injustice may have even broader consequences and also spill over to other contexts, causing non-compliant behaviour there. We present evidence that such 'fairness spillovers' can incur large economic costs: A belief that there is unfairness in taxation in the sense that the rich don't pay enough taxes is associated with a twenty percent higher level of paid absenteeism from work.fairness, beliefs, taxation, work morale

Fixed-term employment, work organization and job satisfaction: Evidence from German individual-level data

The present paper examines the joint effect of fixed-term employment and work organization on job satisfaction using individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Specifically, we analyze whether workers who are heterogeneous in terms of the type of working contract (fixed-term vs. permanent) do also differ with regard to job satisfaction, when they perform under comparable work organizational conditions. Such information would be quite valuable for employers, because they can learn about the responsiveness of heterogeneous workers to innovative work organizational practices. For this purpose, we at first estimate a linear fixed effects model, thereby controlling for unobserved time-constant characteristics. In a second step, we account for potential remaining endogeneity by combining the fixed effects approach with a two-stage estimation strategy. Our empirical results show that in terms of job satisfaction fixed-term workers and their permanent counterparts respond differently to a number of organizational practices including task diversity, employee involvement, social relations at work, general working conditions, and career prospects. The results may be used by employers to improve their concept of diversity management and specifically the job design of heterogeneous workers.Fixed-term employment, permanent employment, job satisfaction, work organization, selectivity bias, unobserved heterogeneity

Profit Sharing and Reciprocity: Theory and Survey Evidence

The 1/n problem potentially limits the effectiveness of profit sharing in motivating workers. While the economic literature suggests that reciprocity can mitigate this problem, it remains silent on the optimal degree of reciprocity. We present a representative model demonstrating that reciprocity may increase productive effort but may also increase unproductive effort such as socializing on the job. The model implies that reciprocity increases profit up to a point but decreases profit beyond that point. Using detailed survey measures of worker reciprocity, we show that the probability of receiving profit sharing takes an inverse U-shape as reciprocity increases. This supports the general implication of the model and is shown to exist for both positive and negative reciprocity and to remain when a series of ability proxies and detailed industry indicators are included.

Peer effects in the workplace

Existing evidence on peer effects in the productivity of coworkers stems from either laboratory experiments or real- world studies referring to a specific firm or occupation. In this paper, we aim at providing more generalizable results by investigating a large local labor market, with a focus on peer effects in wages rather than productivity. Our estimation strategy-which links the average permanent productivity of workers' peers to their wages-circumvents the reflection problem and accounts for endogenous sorting of workers into peer groups and firms. On average over all occupations, and in the type of highskilled occupations investigated in studies on knowledge spillover, we find only small peer effects in wages. In the type of low-skilled occupations analyzed in extant studies on social pressure, in contrast, we find larger peer effects, about one-half the size of those identified in similar studies on productivity

Who benefits from universal child care? Estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance

We examine heterogeneous treatment effects of a universal child care program in Germany by exploiting variation in attendance caused by a reform that led to a large expansion staggered across municipalities. Drawing on novel administrative data from the full population of compulsory school entry examinations, we find that children with lower (observed and unobserved) gains are more likely to select into child care than children with higher gains. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to attend child care than children from advantaged backgrounds but have larger treatment effects because of their worse outcome when not enrolled in child care

Do social interactions in the workplace lead to productivity spillover among co-workers?

Should one expect a worker’s productivity, and thus wage, to depend on the productivity of his/her co-workers in the same workplace, even if the workers carry out completely independent tasks and do not engage in team work? This may well be the case because social interaction among co-workers can lead to productivity spillover through knowledge spillover or peer pressure. The available empirical evidence suggests that, due to such peer effects, co-worker productivity positively affects a worker’s own productivity and wage, particularly in lower-skilled occupations

Early School Exposure, Test Scores, and Noncognitive Outcomes

We estimate the effects of receiving additional schooling before age 5 on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, exploiting unique school entry rules in England that cause variation in the age at school entry and the effective length of the first school year, and combining survey data with administrative school records up to 6 years after exposure. We find significant effects on both cognitive and noncognitive outcomes at ages 5 and 7, particularly so for boys with a disadvantaged parental background. At age 11, effects on cognitive outcomes have disappeared, while there is still evidence for effects on noncognitive outcomes