The pay-as-you-go pension system as fertility insurance and an enforcement device

A PAYGO system may serve as insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for ungrateful children who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. In fact, the latter was Bismarck’s historic motive for introducing this system. It is true that the PAYGO system reduces the investment in human capital, but if it is run on a sufficiently small scale, it may nevertheless bring about a welfare improvement. If, on the other hand, the scale of the system is so large that parents bequeath some of their pensions to their children, it is overdrawn and creates unnecessarily strong disincentives for human capital investment

Pupil-pupil talk: does the thinking together programme enhance pupil-pupil talk within the classroom?

Talk in the classroom has been one of the most talked about topics in the classroom over recent years. For years, many have felt excessive teacher-pupil talk has been the best source to pupil progress however many are starting to feel pupil-pupil talk has greater benefits to progress. This investigation looked at the effect of pupil-pupil talk and whether a Thinking Together Programme was more or less effective than excessive teacher-pupil talk on pupil progress in five GCSE PE theory lessons. Analysis found that when pupil-pupil talk increased and teacher-pupil talk decreased, engagement, behaviour and decision-making enhanced. However, of work that is of greater difficulty, it was alternatively found that excessive teacher-pupil talk was necessary because teachers could support and guide pupils in the correct direction

Unions and the Sword of Justice: Unions and Pay Systems, Pay Inequality, Pay Discrimination and Low Pay

Dispersion in pay is lower among union members than among non-unionists. This reflects two factors. First, union members and jobs are more homogeneous than their non-union counterparts. Second, union wage policies within and across firms lower pay dispersion. Unions' minimum wage targets also truncate the lower tail of the union distribution. There are two major consequences of these egalitarian union wage policies. First, the return to human capital is lower in firms which recognise unions than in the unorganised sector. Second, unions compress the wage structure by gender, race and occupation.Unions, pay distribution, discrimination

Pay Equity Legislation

[Excerpt] The issue of pay equity has attracted substantial attention in recent Congresses. A number of measures, including bills that would provide additional remedies, mandate “equal pay for equivalent jobs,” or require studies on pay inequity, have been introduced in each of the last several congressional sessions. In the 111th Congress, similar legislation has been introduced, including the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12/S. 182/S. 3772), the Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2151/S. 904), and the Title VII Fairness Act (S. 166). In addition, on January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (H.R. 11/S. 181). This legislation supersedes the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., by amending Title VII to clarify that the time limit for suing employers for pay discrimination begins each time they issue a paycheck. Although the House of Representatives passed both the Ledbetter legislation and the Paycheck Fairness Act as a combined package, the Senate did not combine the two bills and has not yet taken up the latter for a vote. Recently, however, Senator Reid reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act as S. 3772, and the bill has been placed on the Senate calendar

When Pay is Kept Secret, the Implications on Performance are Revealing

Key Findings Pay secrecy (in contrast to pay transparency) negatively affects the performance of individuals who are less tolerant to inequity; Pay secrecy negatively affects the perception of the link between performance and pay in individuals intolerant to equity, which in turn, decreases their performance; In contrast, pay secrecy is associated with significantly better task performance than pay transparency for individuals who are more tolerant to inequity

Pay Enough - Or Don't Pay at All

Abstract: Economics seems largely based on the assumption that monetary incentives improve performance. By contrast, a large literature in psychology, including a rich tradition of experimental work, claims just the opposite. In this paper we present and discuss a set of experiments designed to test the effect of different monetary compensations on performance. In our experiments we find that whenever money is offered, a larger amount yields a higher performance. It is not true, however, that offering money always induces a higher performance: participants who were offered a small payoff gave a worse performance than those who were offered no compensation at all. These results suggest that the behavior of participants is influenced by their perception of the contract that is offered to them. When the contract offers money the environment is perceived as monetary, and participants respond in a qualitatively different way in monetary and non-monetary environments. In a different set of experiments we test subjects who, acting as principals, have to provide the appropriate incentive to agents. We show that principals do not anticipate the drastic difference in behavior. The vast majority of principals seem to think incorrectly that a larger compensation is unambiguously a better incentive.Monetary incentives;performance;motivation;principal-agent

Impact of Acquisitions on CEO pay

I examine the impact of acquisition on the pay of CEOs of S&P 1500 firms from 1994-2010. I find insignificant effect of firm performance on post-acquisition CEO pay. Controlling for firm size, CEOs are paid a premium in post-acquisition pay. I find no evidence of differential pay increase for domestic and international acquisitions. Post-acquisition increase in CEO pay is not contingent on the wealth effects and CEOs are not penalized for 'wealth-reducing' acquisitions. I find evidence that a part of acquisition premium in CEO pay can be attributed to the strength of governance. Controlling for survivor bias, the effect of acquisition on CEO pay is downward adjusted

Is it Easier to Escape from Low Pay in Urban Areas? Evidence from the UK

In this paper we compare periods of low pay employment between urban and rural areas in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate the probability that a period of low pay employment will end allowing for a number of possible outcomes, namely to a ‘high pay’ job, self-employment, unemployment and out of the labour force. The results show that there are statistically significant differences in the dynamics of low pay across urban and rural labour markets, particularly in terms of exits to high pay and out of the labour force. After controlling for different personal and job characteristics across markets, urban low pay durations are somewhat shorter on average, with a higher probability that urban workers will move to high pay. However, the results suggest that any urban-rural differences in the typical low pay experience are particularly concentrated among certain types of individuals, e.g. young workers, women without qualifications.Preprin