Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Experimental Investigation of Employment Protection and Labor Substitutability

博士论文研究：就业保障与劳动力替代性的实验研究

• 批准号: 1058380
• 负责人: Guillaume Frechette
• 金额: $ 0.6万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-04-01 至 2013-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1058380&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Experimental; Investigation

Project AbstractUnderstanding the effects of institutions on labor market outcomes has been a crucial research agenda in economics. Which institutional factors allow labor markets with incomplete contracts to achieve economic efficiency, and do these factors affect how a given surplus is split? More specifically, we want to know how the flexibility of a workers contract - i.e. wage flexibility and the possibility of firing - and the ability to replace a worker determine market outcomes. Despite strongly held beliefs and common intuitions on the issue, the empirical evidence is not conclusive.We present an experimental design to investigate how efficiency and distribution of production surplus change in a worker-firm relationship when key institutional factors are varied, in particular employment protection and substitutability of labor. Methodologically, we argue in the proposal that firm-worker relations are best modeled using an indefinite horizon. Consequently, we set up the interaction as a repeated gift exchange game with random termination. Moreover, we elicit beliefs to investigate whether any differences in behavior can be explained by agents' perceptions about their alternatives to a given relationship. The failure of standard equilibrium concepts to discriminate between treatments motivates a discussion of equilibrium selection mechanisms and alternative theories to derive sharper predictions, with our collected data on beliefs and choices providing guidance.Our project's contribution to the field can be summarized as follows:First, this project goes beyond existing worker-firm gift exchange experiments in that we model worker-firm relationship as a repeated game with indefinite horizon. This design choice is motivated by our focus in understanding institutional effects, and allows cooperation to be sustained theoretically, without reference to behavioral (fair/reciprocal) types. We also take effects of employment protection and substitutability of labor to be most salient when the firm-worker relation is of indefinite horizon.Second, we take a step ahead in exploring how agents' beliefs affect their actions in a firm-worker relationship. We hope that our findings will shed light on how beliefs on "outside options" (such as firm's beliefs on expected payoffs if they replaced the current worker with another) affect strategy formation and equilibrium selection in the context of infinitely repeated games.Third, we investigate how the ability to replace a worker with a new one as opposed to the ability to dismiss her without replacement affects efficiency, distribution of production surplus and unemployment differentially in an economy. Again, to our knowledge, our project is the first to make this distinction experimentally. We take this to be crucial for understanding effects of hiring frictions on market outcomes in terms of efficiency and distribution.Our project has immediate relevance for labor market policies since we look precisely at efficiency and distribution, which are key target variables for policy. Moreover, our design allows conclusions about the link between institutional structure and unemployment. Although our experiment is limited to 3 treatments in consideration of feasibility and simplicity, we intend for it to become the basis of a broader research agenda investigating institutional structure on market outcomes. The extent of public information in the market and individual versus collective bargaining are but two examples.

了解制度对劳动力市场结果的影响一直是经济学中一个重要的研究议程。哪些制度因素允许不完全契约的劳动力市场实现经济效率，这些因素是否影响给定剩余的分配？更具体地说，我们想知道工人合同的灵活性--即工资灵活性和解雇的可能性--以及替换工人的能力如何决定市场结果。尽管在这个问题上有着强烈的信念和共同的直觉，但经验证据并不是决定性的。我们提出了一个实验设计，以调查当关键制度因素变化时，特别是就业保护和劳动力的可替代性，工人-企业关系中的效率和生产剩余分配如何变化。在方法论上，我们认为，在建议中，企业与工人的关系，最好使用一个不确定的地平线建模。因此，我们建立的互动作为一个重复的礼物交换游戏的随机终止。此外，我们引发的信念，以调查是否有任何行为的差异可以解释代理人的看法，他们的替代品，以一个给定的关系。标准的均衡概念，以区别对待的失败，激发了均衡选择机制和替代理论的讨论，以获得更清晰的预测，与我们收集的数据的信念和选择提供guidance.Our项目的贡献，该领域可以概括为：首先，这个项目超越了现有的工人-企业礼品交换实验，我们模型的工人-企业的关系作为一个重复的游戏，无限的视野。这种设计选择的动机是我们专注于理解制度效应，并允许合作在理论上得以维持，而无需参考行为（公平/互惠）类型。我们还认为，当企业与工人的关系处于不确定的水平时，就业保护和劳动力的可替代性的效果最为显著。第二，我们进一步探讨了在企业与工人的关系中，代理人的信念如何影响他们的行为。我们希望我们的研究结果将有助于阐明对“外部选择”的信念（如企业的信念，预期收益，如果他们取代目前的工人与另一个）影响战略的形成和均衡选择的背景下，无限重复的game.Third，我们调查的能力，以取代一个新的一个工人，而不是有能力解雇她没有更换影响效率，生产剩余和失业在经济中的差别分配。同样，据我们所知，我们的项目是第一个在实验上做出这种区分的项目。我们认为这对于理解雇佣摩擦对效率和分配等市场结果的影响至关重要。我们的项目与劳动力市场政策密切相关，因为我们精确地研究了效率和分配，这是政策的关键目标变量。此外，我们的设计允许关于制度结构和失业之间的联系的结论。尽管考虑到可行性和简单性，我们的实验仅限于3种治疗方法，但我们希望它成为更广泛的研究议程的基础，调查市场结果的制度结构。市场公开信息的程度和个人与集体谈判只是两个例子。