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

经济学和心理学的悠久传统已经提出了这样一种观念，即个人不仅关心自己的工资，还关心自己与同事的工资之比。本项目对全职制造业工人进行了为期一个月的实地实验，以测试相对薪酬比较是否会影响努力和劳动力供应。衡量个人对同事工资的关心程度，可能会对工资结构产生广泛影响。如果工资不平等减少了努力或劳动力供给，就会产生工资压缩（工资差异远远小于生产率差异）和工资刚性（工资不适应市场条件）。相对薪酬比较也对劳动力市场的组织和企业边界有影响。在实验中，工人们执行各自的生产任务，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）或异构工资（每个团队成员根据其基线生产力排名支付不同的工资）。如果工资不平等会降低士气，那么保持自己的工资不变，当同事的工资高于自己时，工人就会减少产出。此外，本研究还探讨了薪酬不平等影响士气的条件。首先，该设计诱导了薪酬差异公平感的变化：生产任务在同事产出可观察到的程度上存在差异。其次，它导致了实际公平性的随机变化：当一名员工的基准生产率接近其高薪同事时，同事之间的固定薪酬差异就不那么公平。

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.