We explore the dispersion of bonus payments of managers within and between five large firms from the German chemical sector. We use data from a yearly salary survey in these firms during the observation period 2008 to 2013. Bonus payments account for 20 percent of base salaries on average. Both...

Using representative German employee data, we analyse the role of works councils for the incidence of severance payments subsequent to dismissals. While there is a positive relation with severance payments after those dismissals which stem from plant closings, the incidence of a works council is...

We experimentally analyze whether the opportunity to receive a permanent contract motivates temporary group members in a public good setting and how this affects the other group members. We compare an exogenous and an endogenous decision mechanism to extend the temporary agent's group...

We propose experiments in virtual reality (VR) as a new approach to examining behavior in an economic context, e.g., heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments. We simulate a realistic working situation in a highly immersive environment. Implementing a tournament in VR, we are able to mitigate the...

We investigate the relation of further training and employees' affective commitment. In doing so, we distinguish between a support effect and a participation effect: On the one hand we analyze how a firm's general support for further training is associated with the affective commitment of their...

Many experiments indicate that most individuals are not purely motivated by material self interest, but also care about the well being of others. In this paper we examine tournaments among inequity averse agents, who dislike disadvantageous inequity (envy) and advantageous inequity (compassion)....

Although male employees are increasingly making use of parental leave, gender differences in both usage and duration of parental leave are still prevalent. In this contribution, we explore the role of gender for the relation between the incidence/duration of parental leave and earnings after...