We use monthly personnel records of a large German company to analyse the gender wage gap (GWG). Main findings are: (1) the unconditional GWG is 15 percent for blue-collar and 26 percent for white-collar workers; (2) conditional on tenure, entry age, schooling, and working hours, the GWG is 13...

Many firms use subjective performance appraisal systems due to lack of objectiveperformance measures. In these cases, supervisors usually have to rate the performance oftheir subordinates. Using such systems, it is a well established fact that many supervisorstend to assess the employees too...

We model deferred compensation as a share of an uncertain futureprofit granted by a financially constrained employer to her employeein mutual agreement. Deferred compensation serves as a retentionmechanism, helping the employer to avoid bankruptcy. The optimalcombination of cash and deferred...

Least-Unmatched Price Auctions have become a popular format of TV and radio shows. Increasingly,they are also applied in internet trading. In these auctions the lowest single (unique)bid wins. We analyze the game-theoretic solution of least unmatched price auctions when prize,bidding cost and...

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...

Using micro-level data, we examine the effects of Russia`s 2001 flat rate income tax reformon consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expendituresand reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998-2004. Utilizing...

This paper reviews the literature on two-sided atomeless assignment models of workers to tasks. Using simple parametric examples, the fundamental differences between the comparative advantage and the scale of operations models are illustrated. Holding the distributions of abilities and tasks and...

Sick pay is a common provision in most labor contracts. This paperemploys an experimental gift-exchange environment to explore two relatedquestions using both managers and undergraduates as subjects.First, do workers reciprocate generous sick pay with higher effort? Second,do firms benefit from...

This note analyses investment and risk-taking in a simple agency model of public regulation/procurement borrowed from Laffont & Tirole (1993). We show that the principal will overinvest or underinvest depending on whether investment is marginally more productive in bad or in good states. Due to...

This note investigates the effects of introducing a transaction tax ondepth and bid-ask spread using a static model where a competitive market makerfaces informed and liquidity traders. When the degree of information asymmetryis low, an increase in the transaction tax can result into a smaller...