Employment contracts are often incomplete, leaving many responsibilities subject to workers’ discretion. High work morale is therefore essential for sustaining voluntary cooperation and high productivity in firms. We conducted a field experiment to test whether workers reciprocate wage cuts...

What determines reciprocity in employment relations? We conducted a controlled field experiment to measure the extent to which monetary and non-monetary gifts affect workers' performance. We find that nonmonetary gifts have a much stronger impact than monetary gifts of equivalent value. We also...

We study the role of reciprocity in a labor market field experiment. In a recent paper, Gneezy and List (2006) investigate the impact of gift exchange in this context and find that it has only a transient effect on long run outcomes. Extending their work to examine both positive and negative...

What determines reciprocity in employment relations? We conducted a controlled field experiment to measure the extent to which monetary and non-monetary gifts affect workers' performance. We find that nonmonetary gifts have a much stronger impact than monetary gifts of equivalent value. We also...

Are monetary and non-monetary incentives used as substitutes in motivating effort? I address this question in a laboratory experiment in which the choice of the job charac- teristics (i.e., the mission) is part of the compensation package that principals can use to influence agents' effort....

This paper examines the relationship between parenthood and life satisfaction using longitudinal data on women from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Previous studies have focused on satisfaction differences between parents and comparable childless adults, mostly finding small and often negative...

We examine a “Rotten Kid” model (Becker 1974) where a player with social preferences interacts with an egoistic player. We assume that social preferences are intentionbased rather than outcome-based. In a very general multi-stage setting we show that any equilibrium must involve mutually...

Unlike in other disciplines, research output in economics is commonly measured based on the journal titles in which an author has published. Here, I examine how much output measures based on journal titles tell us about the academic interest and relevance of economic papers as measured by...

Research on happiness has produced valuable insights into the sources of subjective well-being that are of importance to economics. A major finding from this literature is that people exhibit a 'baseline' level of happiness that shows persistent strength over time. Here we explore the extent to...

Academic economists today are caught in a “Publication Impossibility Theorem System” or PITS. To further their careers, they are required to publish in A-journals, but for the vast majority this is impossible because there are few slots open in such journals. Such academic competition maybe...