Bargaining under incomplete information, fairness, and the hold-up problem

"In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relationship-specific investments to be allocated by bargaining. This paper investigates the corresponding investment incentives if individuals have heterogeneous fairness preferences and thus differ in their bargaining behavior. Individual preferences are taken to be private information. Investments can then signal preferences and thereby influence beliefs and bargaining behavior. In consequence, individuals might choose high investments in order not to signal information that is unfavorable in the ensuing bargaining." [author's abstract

Equal sharing rules in partnerships

Partnerships are the prevalent organizational form in many industries. Profits are most frequently shared equally among the partners. The purpose of our paper is to provide a rationale for equal sharing rules. We show that with inequity averse partners the equal sharing rule is the unique sharing rule that maximizes the partners' incentives to exert effort. We further show that inequity aversion can enhance efficiency in partnerships of given size, but that it can also cause partnerships to be inefficiently small

Wage inequality and team production: An experimental analysis

Numerous survey studies report that human resource managers curb wage inequality with the intent to avoid detrimental effects on workers’ morale. However, there exists little controlled empirical evidence demonstrating that horizontal social comparisons and wage inequality have adverse effects on worker behavior. In this paper, we present data from a laboratory experiment that studies the impact of wage inequality on participation and effort choices in team production. Overall, we do not find evidence that wage inequality has a significant impact on either participation or effort choices

Competition, Cooperation, and Corporate Culture

Teamwork and cooperation between workers can be of substantial value to a firm, yet the level of worker cooperation often varies between individual firms. We show that these differences can be the result of labor market competition if workers have heterogeneous preferences and preferences are private information. In our model there are two types of workers: selfish workers who only respond to monetary incentives, and conditionally cooperative workers who might voluntarily provide team work if their co-workers do the same. We show that there is no pooling in equilibrium, and that workers self-select into firms that differ in their incentives as well as their resulting level of team work. Our model can explain why firms develop different corporate cultures in an ex-ante symmetric environment. Moreover, the results show that, contrary to first intuition, labor market competition does not destroy but may indeed foster within-firm cooperation

Heterogeneous social preferences, screening, and employment contracts

This paper studies a monopsonistic firm's optimal employment contracts if workers have private information on both their propensity for social comparisons and their ability. Employees of the firm are taken to form their own distinct reference group. It is shown that screening workers with equal ability according to their social preferences is then not possible within the firm. In consequence, the firm distorts production by its employees with low ability, or it excludes workers with low ability and a high propensity for social comparisons. This highlights that firms can use both contractual and organizational measures to reduce the costs arising from workers' social preferences. Further, information on workers' social preferences reduces the latter's impact on employment contracts without changing it qualitatively. Copyright 2011 Oxford University Press 2010 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

I care what you think: social image concerns and the strategic revelation of past pro‑social behavior

This article studies whether people want to control what information on their own past pro-social behavior is revealed to others. Participants are assigned a color that depends on their past pro-social behavior. They can spend money to manipulate the probability with which their color is revealed to another participant. The data show that participants are more likely to reveal colors with more favorable informational content. This pattern is not found in a control treatment in which colors are randomly assigned, thus revealing nothing about past pro-social behavior. Regression analysis confrms these fndings, also when controlling for past pro-social behavior. These results complement the existing empirical evidence, confrming that people strategically and, therefore, consciously manipulate their social image

Motivated beliefs and the elderly's compliance with COVID-19 measures

Although the elderly are more vulnerable to COVID-19, the empirical evidence suggests that they do not behave more cautiously in the pandemic than younger individuals. This theoretical model argues that some individuals might not comply with the COVID-19 measures to reassure themselves that they are not vulnerable, and that the incentives for such self-signaling can be stronger for the elderly. The results suggest that communication strategies emphasizing the dangers of COVID-19 could backfire and reduce compliance among the elderly

Bargaining under incomplete information, fairness, and the hold-up problem

In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relationship-specific investments to be allocated by bargaining. This paper investigates the corresponding investment incentives if individuals have heterogeneous fairness preferences. Individual preferences are taken to be private information. Investments can then signal preferences and thereby influence beliefs and bargaining behavior. In consequence, individuals might choose high investments in order not to signal information that is unfavorable in the ensuing bargaining.Hold-up Relationship-specific investments Fairness Reciprocity Asymmetric information Signalling

The intensity of incentives in firms and markets: Moral hazard with envious agents

While most market transactions are subject to strong incentives, transactions within firms are often not explicitly incentivized. This paper offers an explanation for this observation based on the assumption that agents are envious and suffer utility losses if others receive higher wages. We analyze the impact of envy on optimal incentive contracts in a general moral hazard model and isolate the countervailing effects of envy on the costs of providing incentives. We show that envy creates a tendency towards flat-wage contracts if agents are risk-averse and there is no limited liability. Empirical evidence suggests that social comparisons are more pronounced among employees within firms than among individuals that interact in markets. Flat-wage contracts are then more likely to be optimal in firms.Envy Moral hazard Flat-wage contracts Within-firm vs. market interactions Wage secrecy Boundary of the firm