Empirical work on Akerlof's theory of gift exchange in labor markets has concentrated on the fair wage-effort hypothesis. In fact, however, the theory also contains a social component that stipulates that homogenous agents that are employed for the same wage level will exert more effort,...

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts...

There is widespread belief that workers in temporary agency work (TAW) are subject to poorer working conditions, in particular pay, than comparable workers in the rest of the economy. The first aim of this analysis is to quantify the wage penalty, if any, for workers in TAW. Secondly, we analyze...

We investigate the impact of offshoring on individual level wages and unemployment probabilities and pay particular attention to the question of whether workers on temporary contracts are affected differently than workers on permanent contracts. Data are taken from the German Socio-Economic...

We experimentally investigate multiple notions of equity in ultimatum bargaining with asymmetric outside options. Building on the generalized equity principle formulated by Selten (1978), we derive three different equity rules that can explain 43% of all offers. Our within-subject design further...

This study investigates the effects of unfair enforcement of institutional rules on public good contributions, personal and social norms, and trust. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1,038), we find that biased institutions reduce rule compliance compared to fair institutions. However,...

We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether the gender difference in peer effects – if any – depends on work organization, precisely the structure of social networks. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test by means of a...

This paper extends the standard work effort model by allowing workers to interact through networks. We investigate experimentally whether peer performances and peer contextual effects influence individual performances. Two types of network are considered. Participants in Recursive networks are...

We explore the impact of mentoring of females and gender segregation on wages using a large longitudinal data set for Portugal. Female managers can protect and mentor female employees by paying them higher wages than male-led firms would do. We find that females can enjoy higher wages in...

This study investigates real wage cyclicality in Portugal for the years of 1986-98, addressing the heterogeneity in wages responses to aggregate labor market conditions for workers' hirings and separations. The results exhibit a moderate procyclical behavior of real wages for continuously...