Piece Rates, Fixed Wages, and Incentive Effects: Statistical Evidence from Payroll Records

We develop and estimate an agency model of worker behavior under piece rates and fixed wages. The model implies optimal decision rules for the firm's choice of a compensation system as a function of working conditions. Our model also implies an upper and lower bound to the incentive effect (the productivity gain realized by paying workers piece rates rather than fixed wages) that can be estimated using regression methods. Using daily productivity data collected from the payroll records of a British Columbia tree-planting firm, we estimate these bounds to be an 8.8 and a 60.4 percent increase in productivity. Structural estimation, which accounts for the firm's optimal choice of a compensation system, suggests that incentives caused a 22.6 percent increase in productivity. However, only part of this increase represents valuable output because workers respond to incentives, in part, by reducing quality.     

Profit sharing as a worker discipline device

A synthesis of profit-sharing and efficiency wage models is constructed to provide a preliminary account of how a firm determines its pay parameters, and why it chooses to be a profit-sharing or a fixed-wage firm. We find that the properties of the worker's effort function crucially influence the firm's choices between different compensation systems, and that the adoption of a profit-sharing scheme cannot guarantee the attainment of full employment. Other findings of the paper also seem to be very different from those of Weitzman's share model.     

Contests where there is variation in the marginal productivity of effort

Summary. We provide a characterization of participants' behavior in a contest or tournament where the marginal productivity of effort varies across contestants and individual productivity is private information. We then consider the optimal design of such a contest. We first analyze contestant behavior for the usual type of contest, where the highest output wins. Abilities need not be independently distributed. We demonstrate that there is a unique symmetric equilibrium output function, that output is increasing in ability, and that marginal effort is increasing in ability, while effort decreases when the cost of effort increases. Next we consider the case where the highest output need not win, with independently distributed abilities. We analyze the contest designer's decisions in choosing contest rules optimal from her perspective. We show that the output produced, probability of winning, and contest designer's expected revenue are generally increasing in contestants' ability. We examine the relationship between the marginal cost of producing output and marginal utility per dollar of the net award for winning. Received: July 30, 1998; revised version: August 7, 2000     

Misallocation and productivity effects of the Smoot–Hawley tariff

Using a newly created microeconomic archive of US imports at the tariff line level for 1930–1933, we construct industry-level tariff wedges incorporating the input–output structure of US economy and the heterogeneous role of imports across sectors of the economy. We use these wedges to show that the average tariff rate of 46% in 1933 substantially understated the true impact of the Smoot–Hawley (SH) tariff structure, which we estimate to be equivalent to a uniform tariff rate of 70%. We use these wedges to calculate the impact of the Smoot–Hawley tariffs on total factor productivity and welfare. In our benchmark parameterization, we find that tariff protection reduced TFP by 1.2% relative to free trade prior to the Smoot–Hawley legislation. TFP fell by an additional 0.5% between 1930 and 1933 due to Smoot–Hawley. We also conduct counterfactual policy exercises and examine the sensitivity of our results to changes in the elasticity of substitution and the import share. A doubling of the substitution elasticities yields a TFP decline of almost 5% relative to free trade, with an additional reduction due to SH of 0.4%.     

经济集聚密度与劳动生产率差异-基于北京市微观数据的实证研究

地区间劳动生产率差异是普遍存在的经济现象,根据北京市2004年经济普查数据分析发现,市内各地区的劳动生产率差异非常显著,其差异程度不亚于各市间、各省间的差异水平。我们从经济集聚密度的视角对北京市内的劳动生产率差异进行解释,结果发现劳动生产率与经济密度之间存在显著的正向关系,劳动生产率对单位面积上产出和单位面积上就业的弹性分别为11.8%和16.2%,高于欧美的4%—5%的平均水平。这一分析结论验证了集聚经济效应的存在,也为解释我国地区间劳动生产率的差异提供了一个比较好的理论视角。     

Internal trade,productivity and interconnected industries: A quantitative analysis

Does trade within a country affect welfare and productivity? What are the magnitude and consequences of costs to such trade? To answer these questions, we exploit unique Canadian data to measure internal trade costs in a variety of ways—they are large and vary across sectors and provinces. To quantify their consequences for welfare and productivity, we use a recent multi‐sector trade model featuring rich input–output relationships. We find interprovincial trade is an important contributor to Canada's GDP and welfare, though there are significant costs to such trade. Reducing interprovincial trade costs by 10% yields aggregate gains of 0.9%; eliminating our preferred estimates of costs, gains average between 3% and 7%—equivalent to real GDP gains between $50 billion and $130 billion. Finally, as policy reforms are often sector specific, we liberalize sectors one at a time and find gains are largest in highly interconnected industries.     

Output and wages with inequality averse agents

Abstract.  We analyse a two‐task work environment with risk‐neutral but inequality averse individuals. For the agent employed in task 2 effort is verifiable, while in task 1 it is not. Accordingly, agent 1 receives an incentive contract that, owing to his wealth constraint, leads to a rent that the other agent resents. We show that greater inequality aversion unambiguously decreases total output and therefore average labour productivity. More specifically, inequality aversion reduces effort, wage, and payoff of agent 1. Effects on wage and effort of agent 2 depend on whether effort levels across tasks are substitutes or complements in the firm's output function. JEL classification: D2, J3     

Higher Price,Lower Costs? Minimum Prices in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

In this paper, we examine the introduction of a price floor in an emissions trading system (ETS) when some emissions are regulated outside the ETS. We theoretically characterize the conditions under which a price floor enhances welfare. Using a numerical simulation model of the European Union (EU), we find that moderate minimum prices in the EU ETS can reduce the costs of EU climate policy by up to 30 percent. We also find that, because of tax‐interaction effects, the optimal minimum price in the EU ETS should be about four times higher than the average marginal abatement cost in non‐ETS sectors.     

Start-ups, venture capitalists, and the capital gains tax

A model of start-up finance with double moral hazard is proposed. Entrepreneurs have ideas and technical competence, but lack own resources as well as commercial experience. Venture capitalists (VCs) provide start-up finance and managerial support. Both types of agents thus jointly contribute to the firm's success, but neither type's effort is verifiable. We find that the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low entrepreneurial effort and venture capital support. In this situation, the capital gains tax is particularly harmful. The introduction of a small tax impairs effort and advice and leads to a first-order welfare loss. Several other policies towards venture capital and start-up entrepreneurship are also investigated.     

The impact of the market transparency unit for fuels on gasoline prices in Germany

Increasing horizontal as well as vertical transparency in oligopolistic markets can be advantageous for consumers, due to reduced search costs. However, market transparency can also affect incentives to deviate from collusive agreements and the punishment by rival firms in the market. Using a panel of 27 European countries, we analyse the impact of increased market transparency via the introduction of a market transparency unit for fuels in Germany. Applying a difference-in-differences approach, we find evidence that both gasoline and diesel prices have increased. While consumers may be better off using a retail price app for fuels, gas stations are also able to compare prices at almost no cost.     

MEASURING THE PRICE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OUTPUT

We construct a price index for the scientific R&D services industry, a significant producer of R&D in the United States. Unlike most previous R&D price indexes, our index is not based on input costs but rather on measures of R&D sales. Consequently, unlike input‐cost price indexes, our output‐based index is able to account for changes in productivity and markups in the scientific R&D services industry. We compute that scientific R&D services prices increased, on average, by 7.14 percent at an annual rate from 1987 to 2006. Using our index, we find that real revenues grew at an annual average rate of 2.85 percent. We then propose using our index, in combination with an input‐cost price index, to deflate total R&D nominal expenditures. We find that real total U.S. R&D expenditures grew at an average annual rate of 1.42 percent from 1987 to 2006.     

Trade-induced productivity gains reduce incentives to impose strategic tariffs

Strategic tariffs, which raise an economy's welfare by restricting trade and improving the terms of trade, can create an obstacle to free trade. We evaluate how far trade-induced productivity gains (technology spillovers) reduce or remove this obstacle, because more intensive trade enhances these potential gains. Based on theory and the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) we estimate stronger import-induced than export-induced productivity gains. We feed the theory and the estimates into a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to WIOD. We find that the USA's, China's and the EU's optimal tariffs are reduced by less than 20%, Russia's and India's by around 25% and Brazil's by 40% when taking endogenous trade-induced productivity gains into account. Nonetheless, incentives for single economies to impose strategic tariffs persist. Particularly large, trade-intensive downstream sectors producing distinct goods incentivize high sectoral optimal tariffs. A global free trade agreement could overcome such incentives and maximize the trade-induced productivity gains.     

Aggregate productivity and aggregate technology

Aggregate productivity and aggregate technology are meaningful but distinct concepts. We show that a slightly modified Solow productivity residual measures changes in economic welfare, even when productivity and technology differ because of distortions such as imperfect competition. Our results imply that aggregate data can be used to measure changes in welfare, even when disaggregated data are needed to measure technical change. We then present a general accounting framework that identifies several new non-technological gaps between productivity and technology, gaps reflecting imperfections and frictions in output and factor markets. Empirically, we find that these gaps are important, even though we abstract from variations in factor utilization and estimate only small average sectoral markups. The evidence suggests that the usual focus on one-sector DSGE models misses a rich class of important propagation mechanisms that are present only in multi-sector models.     

Program duplication in higher education is not necessarily bad

Public systems of higher education have recently attempted to cut costs by providing financial incentives to cut duplicated programs, i.e. programs that are offered at different institutions. We study the profit and welfare effects of reducing program duplication, against the background of a funding system reform in Flanders (Belgium). We find that dropping duplicated programs at individual institutions tends to be socially undesirable, due to the students’ low willingness to travel to other institutions and to the limited fixed cost and variable cost savings. Furthermore, we find that the financial incentives offered to drop programs may be very ineffective, leading to both undesirable reform and undesirable status quo. These findings emphasize the complexities in regulating product diversity in higher education, and serve as a word of caution towards the various decentralized financial incentive schemes that have recently been introduced.     

Environmental self-auditing: setting the proper incentives for discovery and correction of environmental harm

Many firms conduct 'environmental audits' to test compliancewith a complex array of environmental regulations. Commentatorssuggest, however, that self-auditing is not as common as itshould be, because firms fear that what they find will be usedagainst them. This article analyzes self-auditing as a two-tieredincentive problem involving incentives both to test for andto effect compliance. After demonstrating the inadequacy ofconventional remedies, we show that incentives can be properlyaligned by conditioning fines on firms' investigative effort.In practice, however, the regulator may not be able to observesuch effort. Accordingly, we propose and evaluate the use ofthree observable proxies for self-investigation: the mannerin which the regulator detected the violation; the firm's owndisclosure of violations; and the firm's observed correctiveactions. Each method has its own efficiency benefits and informationalrequirements, and each is distinct from EPA's current auditpolicy.     

Technological Progress, Downsizing and Unemployment

This paper presents a model where the form of innovations is endogenous. It is shown that with labour market imperfections, which raise the wage above the shadow price of labour, firms over-invest in innovations cutting labour costs and under-invest in increasing quality. As a result, the market outcome features lower long run growth, higher unemployment and lower welfare than the social optimum. It is further shown that a firm's incentives to cut labour costs are increased as wages rise and as the firm declines. Finally, a rise in competition increases incentives to downsize for firms with below average quality performance.     

Investment Incentives of a Regulated Dominant Firm

We study the investment incentives of a regulated, incumbent firm in a deregulation process. The regulator cannot commit to a long-term regulatory policy, and investment decisions are taken before optimal regulatory policies are imposed. We characterize the regulated incumbent's incentive to invest when a deregulation process is initiated and an unregulated firm enters the market as a result. The change in the marginal return to investment depends on how the investment changes the firm's virtual cost—the sum of its physical production and information costs. When the marginal return to investment increases due to deregulation, social welfare increases as a result of higher investment and more competition. Otherwise, the change in social welfare depends on the total of the effects in the fall of investment and increased competition. We also present conditions under which deregulation enhances welfare.     

VERTICALLY INTEGRATED PRODUCTIVITY MEASURES: TESTS OF STANDARD ASSUMPTIONS

In this paper we use an input-output framework to examine two criticisms of standard measures of total factor productivity. These criticisms are (1) that the contribution of capital to productivity growth is underestimated, and (2) that the use of cost shares to weigh factor input contribution is questionable. Using various vertically integrated productivity measures we find that capital's productivity contribution is underestimated in the neoclassical formulation. We also find that in a Pasinetti-Rymes growth model, factor shares do not approximate output elasticities. We conclude that the argument made by Pasinetti, Rymes, and others is supported, that in long-run productivity analysis capital should not be treated as a primary input, but should be measured as an intermediate, produced input.     

工人离职、失业波动与失业保险文献评述

失业不仅涉及失业波动的影响,还包括在职工人的离队。为减少工人搜寻过程中产生的负外部性,应降低工人的信息成本。失业保险政策的实施又降低了失业工人再就业的激励性,应确立有效的失业保险水平,实现产出与社会福利的最大化。     

Production Efficiency in the South African Banking Sector: A Stochastic Analysis

Econometric estimates of the level of efficiency at bank branches are likely to provide detailed insight into the overall level of efficiency in banking. Therefore this paper uses Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis to assess the production efficiency of 61 bank branches in the nine provinces of the Republic of South Africa. We find that every branch is operating at increasing returns to scale and that the level of production efficiency of bank branches is lower than it could be. We also find that at current levels of output, on average, bank branches can reduce their costs by about 17% if they improve the level of efficiency. In addition, we find that Gauteng Province has the lowest average level of returns to scale, while the Free State Province has the highest average level of the nine provinces. In addition, via estimates of the posterior mean for shares and price elasticities, we find that the price of capital is the largest predicted proportion of costs. These findings suggest that bank branches could also obtain cost reductions by increasing the level of output. Regulatory policy reforms and competitive incentives to enable banks to meet this objective should be encouraged.