Drawing on two large German representative data sets, we analyze the role of works councils for the use of performance appraisals (PA). We distinguish between the incidence of performance appraisal systems as intended by the firm and their actual implementation on the level of the individual...

We assess the long-term effects of managerial stress on aging and mortality. First, we show that exposure to industry distress shocks during the Great Recession produces visible signs of aging in CEOs. Applying neural-network based machine-learning techniques to pre- and post-distress pictures,...

This paper examines how professional female tennisplayers react to: i) prize incentives and ii) heterogeneity in ex ante players' abilities. It is found that a larger prize spread encourages women to increase effort, even when controlling for many tournament and player characteristics. Further...

Conventional wisdom suggests that an increase in monetary incentives should induce agents to exert higher effort. In this paper, however, we demonstrate that this may not hold in team settings. In the context of sequential team production with positive externalities between agents, incentive...

A large, mature and robust economic literature on pay for performance now exists, which provides a useful framework for thinking about pay for performance systems. I use the lessons of the literature to discuss how to design and implement pay for performance in practice. -- incentives ; pay for...

Rank-order relative-performance evaluation, in which pay, promotion and symbolic awards depend on the rank of workers in the distribution of performance, is ubiquitous. Whenever firms use rank-order relative-performance evaluation, workers receive feedback about their rank. Using a real-effort...

Most firms rely on subjective evaluations by supervisors to assess their employees' performance. This article discusses the implementation of such appraisal processes, exploring the use of multiple research methods such as the analysis of personnel records, survey data, and lab and field...

Making use of unique balanced panel data for the German chemical sector from the years 2008 to 2011, we explore the extent to which managers' compensation was affected by the economic crisis and the extent to which it increased afterwards. Carrying out longitudinal analyses, we find that, on...