Incentives theory suggests that compensation schemes should be analyzed along two dimensions: controllability and congruence. Most schemes cannot satisfy both criteria at once. EVA bonus schemes, a major managerial innovation of the 90's, favor the congruence criterion. This paper questions ist...

In this paper we present results from a large scale real effort experiment in an online labor market investigating the effect of performance pay and two common leadership techniques: Positive expectations and specific goals. We find that positive expectations have a significant negative effect...

Nearly half of high earning workers receive performance pay as part of their compensation, but we know strikingly little about the incentive effects of piece rate compensation on high-skilled workers. In this paper, we examine changes in medical providers' output in response to a piece rate...

A common feature of public sector labor markets is the use of pay scales. This paper examines how the removal of pay scales impacts productivity, by exploiting a reform that compelled all schools in England to replace pay scales with school-designed performance related pay schemes. We find that...

Two alternative relative compensation schemes are compared with respect to total output that can be generated at a given sum of salaries. While the promotion regime guarantees that any salary increase is permanent, the premium system allows a reduction in the income of an agent to the base...

Agents' decisions to exert effort depends on the provided incentives as well as the potential costs for doing so. So far most of the attention has been on the incentive side. However, our lab experiments underline that both the incentive and cost side can be used separately to shape work...

This study examines how career interruptions and subsequent wages of employees are related. Using individual panel data of middle managers from the German chemical sector, we are able to differentiate between different reasons for interruptions as well as between various compensation components....