This paper exploits a quasi-experimental setting to estimate the impact that a multi-dimensional group incentive scheme had on branch performance in a large distribution firm. The scheme, which is based on the Balanced Scorecard, was implemented in all branches in one division, but not in another...

We document that an increasing fraction of jobs in the U.S. labor market explicitly payworkers for their performance using bonuses, commissions, or piece-rates. We find thatcompensation in performance-pay jobs is more closely tied to both observed (by theeconometrician) and unobserved productive...

We present results from a field experiment testing the gift-exchange hypothesis inside a treeplantingfirm paying its workforce incentive contracts. Firm managers told a crew of treeplanters they would receive a pay raise for one day as a result of a surplus not attributable topast planting...

As firms implement tournament bonus reward schemes, mainly the idea is to introduce competition amongst their agents in the order to promote their performance.Tournaments in which agents compete for a bonus by investing effort, are frequentlyapplied, e.g., in development races, political...

When two or more agents compete for a bonus and the agents' productivity in each of several possible occurrences depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times that are checked to assign the bonus affects the level of un-certainty in the selection process. Uncertainty, in turn,...

We present a model where compensation within a workteam is determinedendogenously by the use of a rank-order tournament. Team memberscompete in their efforts for the right to propose the distribution of a prizewithin the team. The implementation of a proposal requires the approvalof other team...

Human capital and deferred compensation might explain why firms employ but do nothire older workers. Adjustments of wage-tenure profiles for older new entrants areexplored in the context of deferred compensation. From an equity theory perspective,such adjustments might lead to adverse incentive...

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...

When designing incentives for a manager, the trade-off between insuranceand a “good” allocation of effort across various tasks is oftenidentified with a trade-off between the responsiveness (sensitivity, precision,signal-noise ratio) of the performance measure and its similarity(congruity,...