This paper contributes to recent research on work organization as a key success factor.

The potentially adverse labor market effects of severance pay mandates are a continuingsource of policy concern. In a seminal study, Lazear (1990) found that contract avoidance ofseverance pay firing costs was theoretically simple – a bonding scheme would do – but thatempirically the labor...

We empirically investigate if tournaments between heterogeneous contestants are less intensive. To test our hypotheses we use professional sports data from the TOYOTA Handball-Bundesliga, the major handball league in Germany.[...]

This chapter reviews the literature on employment and labor law. The goal of the review is tounderstand why every jurisdiction in the world has extensive employment law, particularlyemployment protection law, while most economic analysis of the law suggests that lessemployment protection would...

In many environments, tournaments can elicit more effort from workers, except perhapswhen workers can sabotage each other. Because it is hard to separate effort, ability andoutput in many real workplace settings, the empirical evidence on the incentive effect oftournaments is thin...

Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical dataon induced sabotage behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in acontrolled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm one of the key insights from theory:effort and sabotage...

This study uses panel data describing about 6,500 employees in a large international companyto study the incentive effects of performance related pay. The company uses two performancerelated remuneration mechanisms. One is an individual "surprise" bonus payment. The other isa more structured...

This paper addresses the applicability of the theory of equalizing differences (Rosen, 1987) ina market in which temporary and permanent workers co-exist. The assumption of perfectcompetition in the labour market is directly questioned and a model is developed in which thelabour market is...

Applying data from 13 waves of the Swiss Labor Force Survey (1991-2003) I assess costs andbenefits of fixed-term contracts. First, I analyze the existence of a contract related wage gapand the effort response of temporary employees in terms of unpaid overtime hours. Second, Iinvestigate whether...

Ein Ziel der Universitäten Nordrhein Westfalens ist die Förderung des wissenschaftlichenNachwuchses. Nach wie vor sind die Hochschulen jedoch keineswegs Vorbilder einergleichberechtigten Geschlechterpolitik. Vielmehr zeigen die geschlechterdifferenzierten Beteiligungsrateneiniger Studiengänge...