Monitoring for worker quality: a theory of task assignment, job ladders, wages and mobility in internal labor markets

监测工人质量：内部劳动力市场的任务分配、工作阶梯、工资和流动性理论

• 批准号: 1260917
• 负责人: Kevin Lang
• 金额: $ 28.35万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-05-01 至 2017-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1260917&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Monitoring; worker; quality; theory; task

The broad goal of the proposed research is to understand how the nature of information and the technology for acquiring it affect wages, promotion paths and task-assignment within firms (the internal labor market). The narrower goal is to explain some of the regularities and variation in the structure of internal labor markets for non-managerial workers. In contrast with much of the literature, the PIs do not focus on policies intended to incentivize hard work or discourage moral hazard, which may be an intuitively unappealing starting point and might lead to conclusions that are inconsistent with the data. Instead, this project focuses on monitoring in order to assess workers.The baseline model is one with two types of workers, good and bad, and two types of task, high and low. In this model most work is routine (at least for suitably trained workers), but workers face occasional "crises" which good workers can resolve but bad workers cannot. Failures are readily observed, but successes are only observed if the firm monitors the worker. Routine work is more productive in the "high" task but failures are more costly. Since monitoring is costly, a firm can choose one of three strategies. First, it can place a worker in the high task and hope for the best. Second, the firm can assign the worker to the low task and monitor the worker. When a crisis arrives, it will observe success as well as failure and know whether the worker is good or bad. Workers who resolve the crisis will be moved to the high task. Finally, it can assign the worker to the low task, not monitor and wait for a failure. As time passes without a failure, it becomes increasingly likely that the worker has successfully resolved a crisis. When sufficient time has passed, the firm will assign the worker to the high task.The first task of this project is the completion of an optimal assignment model with extensions such as partial monitoring, false positive and false negatives as well as the consideration of multiple tasks of increasing complexity. The second task is to embed the model in a broader model of the labor market and wage determination.This type of analysis is expected to enable the PIs to explain important features of non-managerial labor markets.

拟议研究的广泛目标是了解信息的性质和获取信息的技术如何影响公司（内部劳动力市场）的工资、晋升途径和任务分配。狭义的目标是解释非管理人员内部劳动力市场结构的一些规律和变化。与许多文献相反，pi没有关注旨在激励努力工作或阻止道德风险的政策，这可能是一个直观上没有吸引力的起点，并可能导致与数据不一致的结论。相反，该项目侧重于监控，以评估工人。基线模型有两种类型的工人，好的和坏的，两种类型的任务，高的和低的。在这种模式下，大多数工作都是例行公事（至少对受过适当训练的工人来说），但工人偶尔会面临“危机”，这些危机是好工人可以解决的，而坏工人却无法解决。失败很容易观察到，但成功只有在公司监督员工的情况下才能观察到。在“高”任务中，常规工作效率更高，但失败的代价更大。由于监控成本高昂，企业可以从三种策略中选择一种。首先，它可以把一个工人放在高任务和希望最好的。其次，公司可以将工人分配到低任务并监控工人。当危机来临时，它会观察成功和失败，知道工人是好是坏。解决危机的工人将被提升到更高的任务。最后，它可以将工人分配到低任务，而不是监视和等待失败。随着时间的流逝，没有一次失败，工人成功解决危机的可能性越来越大。当足够的时间过去后，公司将指派该工人去完成高任务。本课题的第一个任务是完成一个具有部分监控、假阳性和假阴性等扩展的最优分配模型，并考虑越来越复杂的多个任务。第二项任务是将该模型嵌入到更广泛的劳动力市场和工资决定模型中。这种类型的分析有望使pi能够解释非管理劳动力市场的重要特征。