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.

摘要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来研究当关键制度因素发生变化时，特别是就业保护和劳动力可替代性时，工人-企业关系中生产剩余的效率和分配是如何变化的。在方法论上，我们在建议中认为，公司与工人的关系最好是用一个不确定的范围来建模。因此，我们将互动设置为带有随机终止的重复礼物交换游戏。此外，我们引出信念来调查行为的任何差异是否可以用代理人对给定关系的选择的看法来解释。标准均衡概念在区分治疗方法方面的失败，激发了对均衡选择机制和替代理论的讨论，以获得更清晰的预测，我们收集的关于信念和选择的数据提供了指导。我们的项目对该领域的贡献可以概括如下：首先，该项目超越了现有的工人-企业礼物交换实验，因为我们将工人-企业关系建模为具有无限视野的重复游戏。这种设计选择的动机是我们对制度效应的理解，并允许合作在理论上持续，而不涉及行为（公平/互惠）类型。当企业与劳动者的关系具有不确定性时，就业保护和劳动可替代性的作用最为突出。其次，我们在探索代理人的信念如何影响他们在公司-员工关系中的行为方面迈出了一步。我们希望我们的研究结果能够揭示在无限重复博弈的背景下，对“外部选择”的信念（比如公司对用另一个人取代当前员工的预期回报的信念）是如何影响策略形成和均衡选择的。第三，我们研究了在一个经济体中，用一个新工人取代一个工人的能力与解雇一个工人而不替换他的能力如何对效率、生产剩余分配和失业产生不同的影响。再一次，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方面的市场结果的影响至关重要。我们的项目与劳动力市场政策直接相关，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，我们的设计允许对制度结构和失业之间的联系得出结论。虽然考虑到可行性和简单性，我们的实验仅限于3种治疗方法，但我们打算让它成为更广泛的研究议程的基础，调查制度结构对市场结果的影响。市场中公开信息的程度和个人与集体谈判只是两个例子。