Relative Pay Comparisons in the Workplace: Field Evidence on Effort and Labor Supply

工作场所的相对薪酬比较：努力和劳动力供应的现场证据

• 批准号: 1459928
• 负责人: Emily Breza
• 金额: $ 40.78万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-05-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1459928&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Relative; Pay; Comparisons; Workplace; Field

A long tradition in economics and psychology has advanced the notion that individuals care about not only their own pay, but also their pay relative to that of their co-workers. This project implements a field experiment with full-time manufacturing workers over a one-month period to test whether relative pay comparisons affect effort and labor supply. Measuring the extent to which individuals care about the wages of their co-workers has potentially broad implications for wage structure. If wage inequality reduces effort or labor supply, this can generate wage compression (differences in wage that are much smaller than differences in productivity) and wage rigidity (wages that do not adjust to market conditions). Relative pay comparisons also have implications for the organization of labor markets and firm boundaries. In the experiment, workers perform individual production tasks, but are organized into distinct teams, defined by the type of product they produce. Teams are randomized to receive either compressed wages (where all workers earn the same daily wage, drawn randomly from one of three wage levels) or heterogeneous wages (where each team member is paid a different wage according to his baseline productivity ranking). If pay inequality decreases morale, then holding own wage fixed, a worker will reduce output when his co-workers are paid more than himself. In addition, this study explores the conditions under which unequal pay affects morale. First, the design induces variation in the perceived fairness of pay differences: production tasks differ in the extent to which co-worker output is observable. Second, it induces random variation in actual fairness: the fixed pay differences between co-workers are less fair when a worker is close in baseline productivity to his higher paid peers.

经济学和心理学的一个长期传统已经提出了这样一个概念，即个人不仅关心自己的工资，而且关心他们相对于同事的工资。本研究以全职制造业工人为对象，进行为期一个月的实地实验，以检验相对工资比较是否会影响努力和劳动力供给。衡量个人对同事工资的关心程度可能对工资结构产生广泛的影响。如果工资不平等减少了努力或劳动力供给，这可能会产生工资压缩（工资差异远小于生产率差异）和工资刚性（工资不适应市场条件）。相对工资比较也对劳动力市场的组织和企业边界有影响。在实验中，工人执行单独的生产任务，但根据他们生产的产品类型被组织成不同的团队。团队随机接受压缩工资（所有工人的日工资相同，从三个工资水平中随机抽取）或异质工资（每个团队成员根据其基线生产力排名获得不同的工资）。如果工资不平等降低了士气，那么保持自己的工资不变，当同事的工资高于自己时，工人就会减少产量。此外，本研究还探讨了薪酬不平等影响士气的条件。首先，设计诱导的变化，在感知公平的薪酬差异：生产任务不同的程度上，同事的输出是可观察的。其次，它会导致实际公平性的随机变化：当一个工人的基线生产力接近他的高薪同行时，同事之间的固定工资差异就不那么公平了。