Purpose – It is known that the self‐employed are generally more satisfied than salaried workers. The aim of this paper is to test whether this phenomenon is particularly found for the first‐generation self‐employed. Design/methodology/approach – French and British panel data are...

Purpose – It is known that the self-employed are generally more satisfied than salaried workers. The aim of this paper is to test whether this phenomenon is particularly found for the first-generation self-employed. Design/methodology/approach – French and British panel data are analysed,...

The authors test the hypothesis that individual effort on the job depends both on one's own income and on the individual's position in the relevant income distribution. Combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with multi-country ISSP survey data, they analyze the extent to which...

This paper reports on the results of a laboratory experiment aiming at investigating the effects of wage comparisons on effort. Individuals compare to each others and such comparisons do affect their decisions. For a given absolute wage, those who get a lower rank in the distribution decrease...

This paper combines ISSP survey data and experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game to determine the effect of status or relative income on work effort. We find a strong effect of others' incomes on individual effort decisions in both datasets. The individual's rank in the income...

Cet article relate les résultats d'une expérience portant sur l'effet des comparaisons de salaire sur les décisions d'effort. Les individus comparent leur salaire avec ceux des membres de leur groupe de référence et cela affecte leurs décisions. À salaire égal, les individus situés à...