Employees often learn about their ability while working, and the resulting beliefs interact with pay incentives to shape employment outcomes. This paper investigates this issue within a model that incorporates learning about ability on the job, dynamic selection, effort, and variation in pay...

Many large listed firms offer workers the opportunity to buy shares in the firm at discounted rates through employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The discounted rate creates a gift exchange, where the firm hopes that workers who accept the gift reciprocate with greater loyalty and effort. But...

The introduction of the W-salaries and the junior professorship through the amendment of the University Framework Act 2002 is viewed critically, both from the perspective of that time and in retrospect.

This paper studies wage structure characteristics and their incentive effects within one firm. Based on personnel records and an employee survey, we provide evidence that wages are attached to jobs and that promotions play a dominant role as a wage determinant. We furthermore show that a...

This study investigates whether information about Chief Executive Officer (CEO) incentives is useful for predicting future earnings. We find that in companies with higher CEO equity incentives, current year earnings are more informative of future earnings than in other companies. Additionally,...

We investigate the consequences for losing competitors following the end of a promotion tournament. We examine CEO tournaments and find that the total incentives of non-promoted executives (NPEs) are likely to decrease significantly at the end of a tournament based on evidence of their lower...

In many organizations, employees enjoy significant discretion regarding project selection. If projects differ in their informativeness about an employee’s quality, project choices will be distorted whenever career concerns are important. We analyze a model in which an organization can shape...

We study optimal incentive contracts for workers who are reciprocal to management attention. When neither worker's effort nor manager's attention can be contracted, a double moral-hazard problem arises, implying that reciprocal workers should be given weak financial incentives. In a...

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1978 expanded employee age protections to age 70, making the widespread practice by U.S. firms of mandating retirement at age 65 illegal. Building on the work of Lazear (1979), we propose that the law change not only weakened the long-term employment...

I study a career concerns model in which the principal receives information about the agent's performance from a possibly biased evaluator. The optimal bias solves the tradeoff between ex-post efficiency of the principal's decisions about the agent and incentive provision. It is "anti-agent"...