Gift giving and worker productivity: Evidence from a firm-level experiment

Bellemare, Charles; Shearer, Bruce

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2008.12.001

“…Workers may then have a preference for rewarding kind intentions of the firm and punishing unkind ones, beyond just caring about the 6 A second, related variation between our treatments is whether an inactive, but interested dummy player (the shareholder in TC0 and TC25) is present or not. Such inactive dummy players have been incorporated in ultimatum game experiments by Güth and van Damme (1998), Bereby-Meyer and Niederle (2005), and Fershtman and Gneezy (2001).…”

Section: Behavioral Predictions and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They find that paying more than market-clearing wages has a short-lived effect on workers' effort, both in a library data entry task and in a door-to-door fund raising task. 4 However, placing the labor relation within a firm instead of in a spot labor market, Bellemare and Shearer (2009) obtain somewhat different results. They conducted a gift-exchange field experiment within a tree-planting firm, where workers received a one-day surprise bonus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gift exchange and the separation of ownership and control

Maximiano

¹

,

Sloof

²

,

Sonnemans

³

2013

Games and Economic Behavior

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“…Gneezy and List (2006) or Bellemare and Shearer (2009), but importantly, our design allows us to use detailled additional information to more precisely estimate the treatment effects. Most importantly we have a measure of data entry ability from the temp agency.…”

Section: Regression Analysis Of Treatment Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerial Payoff and Gift Exchange in the Field

Englmaier

¹

,

Leider

²

2012

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We conduct a field experiment where we vary both the presence of a gift exchange wage and the effect of the worker's effort on the manager's payoff. The results indicate a strong complementarity between the initial wage gift and the agent's ability to "repay the gift". We collect information on ability to control for differences and on reciprocal inclination to show that gift exchange is more effective with more reciprocal agents. We present a simple principal-agent model with reciprocal subjects that motivates our empirical findings. Our results offer an avenue to reconcile the recent conflicting evidence on the efficacy of gift exchange outside the lab; we suggest that the significance of gift exchange relations depends on details of the environment. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL-Code: C910, J330, M520.

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“…Recent studies …nd mostly moderate support for positive reciprocity. See for instance Gneezy and List (2006), Cohn et al (2009), Kube et al (2010), Bellemare and Shearer (2009) and Hennig-Schmidt et al (2010). 4 See for instance "Performance Reviews: Many Need Improvement" in the New York Times (September 10, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

Berger

¹

,

Harbring

²

,

Sliwka

³

2013

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 5020 June 2010 ABSTRACT Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution: An Experimental InvestigationA real effort experiment is investigated in which supervisors have to rate the performance of individual workers who in turn receive a bonus payment based on these ratings. We compare a baseline treatment in which supervisors were not restricted in their rating behavior to a forced distribution system in which they had to assign differentiated grades. We find that productivity was significantly higher under a forced distribution by about 8%. But also in the absence of forced distribution, deliberate differentiation positively affected output in subsequent work periods.JEL Classification: C91, D83, J33, M52

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Gift giving and worker productivity: Evidence from a firm-level experiment

Cited by 156 publications

References 25 publications

Gift exchange and the separation of ownership and control

Gift exchange and the separation of ownership and control

Managerial Payoff and Gift Exchange in the Field

Performance Appraisals and the Impact of Forced Distribution—An Experimental Investigation

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