Tenure, Wage Profiles and Monitoring

Abstract

Efficiency wage theory predicts that firms can induce worker effort by the carrot of high wages and / or the stick of monitoring worker performance. Another option available to firms is to tilt the remuneration package over time such that the lure of high future earnings acts as a deterrent to current shirking. In this paper we undertake the first empirical investigation of this relationship between the slope of the wage-tenure profile and the level of monitoring. On the assumption that firms strive for the optimal trade-off between these various instruments, we hypothesise that increased monitoring leads to a decline in the slope of the wage-tenure profile. Our empirical analysis, using two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data, provides robust support for this prediction.Monitoring, Tenure, Efficiency, Wages.