Technology adoption under hidden information

We consider a firm where workers have pre-contractual private information regarding their cost of production. Before contracting takes place, the owner of the firm can adopt a new technology that reduces production costs for each type of worker. We show that technology adoption may have an adverse rent effect that counteracts the cost-reducing effect. This is the case whenever the new technology reduces the costs of more efficient types more strongly. Nevertheless, if the owner contracts directly with a worker (two-tier hierarchy), the cost-reducing effect always dominates. By contrast, if the firm has more hierarchical tiers such that contracting with the worker is delegated to a manager, the rent effect may prevail. Then, the owner does not adopt the new technology, even if it is costlessly available.     

Endogenous information quality: A job-assignment application

This paper investigates the optimal acquisition of information in a model of job assignment within a firm. We consider a firm with two types of jobs, skilled and unskilled. The firm draws workers randomly from the general population, and a worker is either talented or untalented. Initially, a worker's productivity in the firm is unknown to the worker and the firm. Workers are equally productive in the unskilled job, but talented workers are more productive in the skilled job than in the unskilled job, and untalented workers are more productive in the unskilled job than in the skilled job. Before assigning a worker to a job, the firm can test whether the employee is talented, and the firm is able to choose the accuracy of this test. We assume that the cost of a test is increasing and convex in test accuracy. We show that (1) the accuracy of the firm's test increases with the cost of a mismatched worker; (2) increased optimism about the worker's ability need not lead to less rigorous testing; (3) the probability that a worker is assigned to the skilled job need not increase as the gain from assigning a talented worker to a skilled job increases, or the loss from assigning an untalented worker to a skilled job decreases, or the fraction of the population that is skilled increases; and (4) a longer testing period, allowing as many as two tests of workers, leads the firm to use a less expensive, and less accurate, test initially than when there is only one opportunity to gather information.     

Performance Pay,Productivity and Morale*

This paper incorporates the notion of worker morale into an economic model of pay and performance, and examines its implications for the efficacy and design of performance-based pay schemes. A worker's morale is determined by his relative pay status. A contract that rewards only individual performance can therefore undermine the morale of the least skilled workers in a firm and thereby adversely affect their productivity. On the other hand, competition for relative pay status tends to boost the productivity of highly skilled workers in the firm. The net effect on productivity depends on the composition of the firm's workforce. If the workforce is sufficiently heterogeneous then the inclusion of a profit-sharing component in the pay contract, which reduces the pay differential across workers, can sufficiently boost the morale of the least skilled workers as to improve overall productivity and profitability.     

Sorting by search intensity

In this paper, I characterize matching in an on-the-job search model with endogenous search intensity, heterogeneous workers and firms, and match surplus is shared between workers and firms through bargaining. I provide proof of existence and uniqueness of steady state equilibrium. Given equally efficient matched and unmatched search, the worker skill conditional distribution of firm productivity over matches is stochastically increasing (decreasing) in worker skill if the production function is supermodular (submodular). I also show that this strong notion of sorting does not obtain everywhere for the firm productivity conditional match distribution.     

Attracting responsible employees: Green production as labor market screening

Corporate social responsibility can improve firms’ ability to recruit highly motivated employees. This can secure socially responsible firms’ survival even in a highly competitive environment. We show that if both socially responsible (green) and non-responsible (brown) firms exist in equilibrium, workers with high moral motivation, who shirk less than others, will self-select into the green firms. If unobservable effort is sufficiently important for firm productivity, this can drive every brown firm out of business—even in the case where many workers have no moral motivation whatsoever.     

Starting Wages Respond to Employer's Risk

Firms hiring new graduates face uncertainty on the future productivity of workers. Theory suggests that starting wages reflect this, with lower pay for greater uncertainty. We use the dispersion of exam grades within a field of education as an indicator of the unobserved heterogeneity that employers face. We find solid evidence that starting wages are lower if the variance of exam grades is higher and higher if the skew is higher: employers shift the cost of productivity risk to new hires, but pay for the opportunity to catch a really good worker. Estimating the extent of risk cost sharing between firm and worker shows that shifting to workers is larger in the market sector than in the public sector and diminishes with experience.     

FDI,Technology Spillovers,and Wages

This study distinguishes multinational firm (MNE) technology‐spillover from learning effects. Whenever learning takes time, the model predicts that foreign investors deduct the economic value of learning from wages of inexperienced workers and add it to experienced ones to prevent them from moving to local competitors. Hence, the national wage bill is unaffected by the presence of MNEs. In contrast to learning, technology spillover effects occur whenever a worker with MNE experience contributes more to local firms' than to MNEs' productivity. In this case, experienced MNE workers are hired by indigenous firms and the host country obtains a welfare gain from the presence of MNEs.     

Resistance to technology adoption: The rise and decline of guilds

This paper analyzes the decision of a group of specialized workers to form a guild and block the adoption of a new technology that does not require their specialized input. The theory predicts an inverted-U relation between guilds and market size: for small markets, firm profits are insufficient to cover the fixed cost of adopting the new technology, and hence, specialized workers have no reason to form guilds; for intermediate sized markets, firm profits are large enough to cover the higher fixed costs, but not large enough to defeat workers' resistance, and so workers form guilds and block adoption; and for large markets, these profits are sufficiently large to overcome worker resistance and so guilds disband and the more productive technology diffuses throughout the economy. We show that this inverted-U relation between guilds and market size predicted by our theory exists in a dataset of Italian guilds from the 14th to the 19th century.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH AND WORKER REALLOCATION*

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. An equilibrium model of growth and firm evolution designed to clarify the role of worker reallocation in the growth process is studied. We show that it explains the correlations between size measures and labor productivity found in Danish firm data. Conditions under which the reallocation of workers from less to more productive firms contributes to aggregate productivity growth in the economy modeled are derived. Finally, a proof of existence of an equilibrium solution to the model is also provided.     

Employment Protection and Unemployment Benefits: On Technology Adoption and Job Creation in a Matching Model

We analyse the effects of different labour‐market policies (employment protection, unemployment benefits, and payroll taxes) on job creation and technology choices in a model where firms are matched with workers of different productivity and wages are determined by ex post bargaining. The model is characterized by two intertwined sources of inefficiency, namely a matching externality and a hold‐up externality associated with the bargaining strength of workers. The results depend on the relative importance of the two externalities and on worker risk aversion. “Flexicurity”, meaning low employment protection and generous unemployment insurance, can be optimal if workers are sufficiently risk‐averse and the hold‐up problem is relatively important.     

Worker flows, job flows and firm wage policies

Like many transition economies, Slovenia is undergoing profound changes in the workings of the labour market with potentially greater flexibility in terms of both wage and employment adjustment. To investigate the impact of these changes, we use unique longitudinal matched employer‐employee data that permits measurement of employment transitions and wages for workers and enables links of the workers to the firms in which they are employed. We can thus measure worker flows and job flows in a comprehensive and integrated manner. We find a high pace of job flows in Slovenia especially for young, small, private and foreign‐owned firms and for young, less educated workers. While job flows have approached the rates observed in developed market economies, the excess of worker flows above job flows is lower than that observed in market economies. A key factor in the patterns of the worker and job flows is the determination of wages in Slovenia. A base wage schedule provides strict guidelines for minimum wages for different skill categories. However, firms are permitted to offer higher wages to an individual based upon the success of the worker and/or the firm. Our analysis shows that firms deviate from the base wage schedule significantly and that the idiosyncratic wage policies of firms are closely related to the observed pattern of worker and job flows at the firm. Firms with more flexible wages (measured as less compression of wages within the firm) have less employment instability and are also able to improve the match quality of their workers. JEL Classifications: J23, J31, J41, J61, P23, P31.     

Rent Rigidity,asymmetric information,and volatility bounds in labor markets

Two thirds of US unemployment volatility is due to fluctuations in workers' job-finding rate. In search and matching models, aggregate productivity shocks generate such fluctuations: via inputs in the matching technology, they affect the rate at which workers and firms come into contact. Quantitatively, this mechanism has been found to be negligible in a calibrated textbook model, but also more than sufficient if wages are completely rigid. We study a weaker concept of rigidity based on worker rents (wages in excess of the value of unemployment). We show that volatility is subject to an upper bound if worker rents are weakly procyclical, thus at best rigid. Quantitatively, with Rent Rigidity, the mechanism accounts for at most 20% of the variance of the job-finding rate. In light of this result we reexamine the question whether asymmetric information on gains from trade amplifies fluctuations. We analyze a series of bargaining solutions, and conclude that asymmetric information at best makes rents rigid. Our analysis provides a unifying perspective on a very lively debate.     

Profit sharing and firm size: The role of team production

This paper presents a model showing that profit sharing is subject to the 1/N problem in the case of independent worker productivity but not in the case of interdependent worker productivity. This implies the role of firm size on the likelihood of profit sharing will differ by the nature of the underlying technology. We test this implication using German establishment data and using a proxy for interdependent worker productivity. The results conform to the theory showing that firm size is associated with reduced profit sharing use when technology is independent but not when technology is interdependent.     

Firm heterogeneity and trade-induced layoffs: An empirical investigation

We use a novel data set with verified observations of trade-induced layoffs by U.S. firms to study the interaction between firm productivity and trade liberalization as key determinants of firm-level job destruction due to trade. We find that patterns of trade-induced layoffs are broadly consistent with the predictions for firm-level employment generated by the Melitz (2003) heterogeneous firms theory – the number of trade-induced layoffs increases with firm productivity for non-exporting firms but decreases with firm productivity for exporting firms. The fact that exporting firms incur trade-induced layoffs at all invites a refined interpretation of the theory. Our findings suggest that exporting firms may lay off some workers who work in production for their shrinking domestic segments, while also engaging in some within-firm reallocation of workers. We also find that, even after controlling for productivity and export status, larger firms lay off more workers due to trade competition.     

Economic transition, higher education and worker productivity in China

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases TFP for foreign-invested firms. Estimates vary substantially across ownership classes, the effect of schooling on productivity being highest in foreign-invested firms. We infer that market mechanisms contribute to a more efficient use of human capital within firms.     

TRAINING, JOB SECURITY AND INCENTIVE WAGES

This paper considers the optimal level of firm‐specific training by taking into account the positive effect of training on the expected duration of workers' current employment. In the framework of an efficiency wage model, a short expected job tenure represents a disamenity that reduces the penalty from shirking. As this disamenity increases, workers have an incentive to continue providing a positive level of effort only if they are compensated by a higher wage. We endogenize the employment separation rate by introducing firm‐specific training. Firm‐specific training creates a rent that is lost if the worker is separated from the firm. As a result, the firm will be more reluctant to fire its trained workforce in a recession. This implies that firm‐specific training can decrease current wages because it represents a commitment to lower future labour turnover.     

The importance of worker, firm and match effects in the formation of wages

This paper estimates a Mincerian wage equation with worker, firm, and match specific effects and thereby complements the growing empirical literature started by the seminal paper of Abowd (Econometrica 67:251–333, 1999b). The analysis takes advantage of the extensive Danish IDA data which provides wage information on the entire working population in a 27-year period. We find that the major part of wage dispersion in the Danish labor market can be explained by differences in worker characteristics. However, the relative contributions of the three components vary across subgroups of workers. The match effect constitutes a non-negligible part of the overall wage dispersion. An analysis of inter-industry wage differentials shows that firm characteristics are more important at the industry level than at the worker level. Similarly, we find evidence that high-wage workers tend to sort into high-wage industries to a larger extent than they sort into high-wage firms within industries. The mobility pattern of workers is related to the quality of the firm and the match. Finally, we find that firms’ wage policies differ across subgroups.     

Welfare‐reducing Domestic Cost Reduction*

We show that cost reduction by a domestic firm may reduce domestic welfare if it changes a foreign firm’s production strategy from foreign direct investment to export. Domestic cost reduction can be welfare reducing when the domestic market is sufficiently small and domestic firm’s marginal cost of production is higher than the foreign firm’s marginal cost of production under foreign direct investment, which is a usual feature of trade between developed and developing countries. So, developing countries with small domestic markets need competent competition policies when encouraging domestic innovation and also trying to attract foreign direct investment.     

Who invests more in advanced abatement technology? Theory and evidence

We study firm investment in abatement technology under a heterogeneous‐firm framework. We find that more‐productive firms make more (less) investment in abatement technology if investment and productivity are complements (substitutes). Under linear demand, firms’ abatement investments exhibit an inverted U‐shape with respect to productivity level. This finding is in contrast to results in existing studies. We also find that in response to tightened environmental regulations, more‐productive firms raise their respective investments in abatement technology, whereas less‐productive firms do the opposite. More‐productive firms have lower pollution emission intensity. The key theoretical predictions are confirmed by empirical tests using Chinese data.     

Performance Pay and Adverse Selection*

It is well known in personnel economics that firms may improve the quality of their workforce by offering performance pay. We analyze an equilibrium model where worker productivity is private information and show that the firms’ gain from worker self‐selection may not be matched by a corresponding social gain. In particular, the equilibrium incentive contracts are excessively high‐powered, thereby inducing the more productive workers to exert too much effort and increasing agency costs stemming from the misallocation of effort.