Effort and Comparison Income: Experimental and Survey Evidence

Clark, Andrew E.; Masclet, David; Villeval, Marie Claire

doi:10.1177/001979391006300303

Cited by 163 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…But in contrast to a setting in which a forced distribution is present from the outset, the participants now have a di¤erent reference standard as they have already experienced more favorable ratings, which may cause their reduced motivation. This is in line with recent …eld studies by Ockenfels et al (2010) and Clark et al (2010) showing that the violation of reference points for bonus payments can have detrimental e¤ects on subsequent performance.…”

Section: Introducing or Abolishing A Forced Distribution?supporting

confidence: 90%

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 5020 June 2010 ABSTRACT Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution: An Experimental InvestigationA real effort experiment is investigated in which supervisors have to rate the performance of individual workers who in turn receive a bonus payment based on these ratings. We compare a baseline treatment in which supervisors were not restricted in their rating behavior to a forced distribution system in which they had to assign differentiated grades. We find that productivity was significantly higher under a forced distribution by about 8%. But also in the absence of forced distribution, deliberate differentiation positively affected output in subsequent work periods.JEL Classification: C91, D83, J33, M52

show abstract

Section: Introducing or Abolishing A Forced Distribution?supporting

confidence: 90%

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…give students a greater motivation, make them more self-con dent, and ultimately induce them to exert more e ort in their studies (Clark et al, 2010;Azmat & Iriberri, 2010). E ort, in turn, would increase the marginal gains from schooling, and induce students to choose more schooling.…”

Section: Rank Provides Incomplete Information Of One's Own Abilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment

Elsner

Isphording

2017

Journal of Labor Economics

161

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition. We find that a student's ordinal rank significantly affects educational outcomes later in life. If two students with the same ability have a different rank in their respective cohort, the higher-ranked student is significantly more likely to finish high school, attend college, and complete a 4-year college degree. These results suggest that low-ranked students under-invest in their human capital even if they have a high ability compared to most students of the same age. Exploring potential channels, we find that students with a higher rank have higher expectations about their future career, a higher perceived intelligence, and receive more support from their teachers. NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYParents often believe that high-ability classmates have a positive influence on their children, and potential classmates are often a decisive factor for choosing a school. In this paper, we show that having high-ability peers in school is not beneficial for everyone. A student who is surrounded by peers that are smarter than herself has a low ordinal rank within her peer group, which may come with some disadvantages. While she may benefit from studying with smarter peers, she may experience a disadv...

show abstract

“…We are particularly interested in understanding how the relation between job satisfaction and information on co-workers' pay may differ for those whose wage is above the average wage of their co-workers and those whose wage is below the average of 8 Lab experimental studies have developed a series of games such as the dictator game, the ultimatum game, or the trust game (see Rabin 1998 for a survey) showing evidence that relative outcomes matter. See in particular Fehr and Falk 1999, Charness 1999, Fehr et al 1998, Fehr et al 1993, Fehr and Schmidt, 1999, Charness and Rabin, 2002, and Clark et al, 2010 for lab evidence of relative pay effects. Note however that in experimental effort games, Charness and Kuhn (2007) and Bartling and Von Siemens (2010) find that workers' effort is highly sensitive to their own wages, but unaffected by co-worker wages.…”

Section: A Simple Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We use a simple theoretical framework and a randomized manipulation of access to information on peers' wages to provide new evidence on the effects of relative pay on individual job satisfaction and job search intentions. A randomly chosen subset of employees of the University of California (UC) was informed about a new website listing the pay of University employees. All employees were then surveyed about their job satisfaction and job search intentions. Our information treatment doubles the fraction of employees using the website, with the vast majority of new users accessing data on the pay of colleagues in their own department. We find an asymmetric response to the information treatment: workers with salaries below the median for their pay unit and occupation report lower pay and job satisfaction, while those earning above the median report no higher satisfaction. Likewise, below-median earners report a significant increase in the likelihood of looking for a new job, while above-median earners are unaffected. Our findings suggest that job satisfaction depends directly on relative pay comparisons, and that this relationship is non-linear.

show abstract

Effort and Comparison Income: Experimental and Survey Evidence

Cited by 163 publications

References 40 publications

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment

Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About