We use administrative personnel records of a large British financial sector employer to investigate how workers' behaviour responds to remuneration differences and 'luck' in the promotion system. The main methodological innovation is the use of the early part of a panel dataset to construct an...

The labour economics literature refers often to effort, but there is little empirical evidence as to how productivity and effort respond to wage rate variations. An unusual natural experiment in which wage rates suffered an exogenous change of two weeks' duration gives some insight into the...

Recent theoretical contributions to labor economics refer often to effort, but there exists little or no empirical evidence as to how important effort variations are in determining productivity. Analysis of data from an unusual natural experiment gives some insight into the magnitude of such...