It is often claimed that supervisors do not differentiate enough between high and low performing employees when evaluating performance. The purpose of this paper is to study the incentive effects of this behavior empirically. We first show in a simple model that the perceived degree of past...

This paper studies how portable skill accumulated in the labor market are. Using rich data on tasks performed in occupations, we propose the concept of task-specific human capital to measure the transferability of skills empirically. Our results on occupational mobility and wages show that labor...

This paper experimentally investigates the impact of different pay and relative performance information policies on employee effort. We explore three information policies: No feedback about relative performance, feedback given halfway through the production period, and continuously updated...

This paper investigates the impact of wage dispersion on firm productivity in different working environments. More precisely, it examines the interaction with: i) the skills of the workforce, using a more appropriate indicator than the standard distinction between white- and blue collar workers,...

Presenteeism behavior, i.e. working despite illness, is a common phenomenon wordwide and can have severe consequences for employees and firms alike. In this study, we investigate the relation between the use of company performance appraisals and employees' presenteeism behavior. We use...

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...