We present an overview of models of long-term self-enforcing labor contracts in which risk sharing is the dominant motive for contractual solutions. A base model is developed which is sufficiently general to encompass the two-agent problem central to most of the literature, including variable...

This paper provides a model that can account for the almost uniform staggering of wage contracts in some countries as well as for the markedly nonuniform staggering in others. In the model, short and long contracts as well as long contracts concluded in different periods are strategic...

We provide evidence on how two important types of institutions - dismissal barriers, and bonus pay - affect contract enforcement behavior in a market with incomplete contracts and repeated interactions. Dismissal barriers are shown to have a strong negative impact on worker performance, and...

What happens when employers would like to screen their employees but only observe a subset of output? We specify a model in which heterogeneous employees respond by producing more of the observed output at the expense of the unobserved output. Though this substitution distorts output in the...

We analyze a multitasking model with a verifiable routine task and a skill-dependent activity characterized by moral hazard. Contracts negotiated by firm/employee pairs follow from Nash bargaining. High- and low-skilled employees specialize, intermediate productivity employees perform both...

Using matched employer-employee-contract data for Portugal – a country with near-universal union coverage – we find evidence of a sizable effect of union affiliation on wages. Gelbach's (2016) decomposition procedure is next deployed to ascertain the contributions of worker, firm, match, and...

Subjective performance evaluations are commonly used to provide feedback and incentives to workers. However, such evaluations can generate significant disagreements and conflicts, the severity of which may be driven by many factors. In this paper we show that a workers’ level of...

We consider positive and normative aspects of subsidizing work arrangements where subsidies are paid in time of low demand and reduced working hours so as to stabilize workers’ income. In a matching framework such an arrangement increases labor demand. Tightening eligibility to short-time work...

We analyse the implications of habit formation relating to wages in a multi-period efficiency-wage model. If employees have such preferences, their existence provides firms with incentives to raise wages and reduce employment over time. Greater intensity does not necessarily have the same...