IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v55y2011i7p964-979.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Job matching when employment contracts suffer from moral hazard

Author

Listed:
  • Demougin, Dominique
  • Helm, Carsten

Abstract

We consider a job matching model where the relationships between firms and wealth-constrained workers suffer from moral hazard. Specifically, effort on the job is non-contractible so that parties that are matched negotiate a bonus contract. Higher unemployment benefits affect the workers' outside option. The latter is improved for low-skilled workers. Hence they receive a larger share of the surplus, which strengthens their effort incentives and increases productivity. Effects are reversed for high-skilled workers. Moreover, raising benefit payments affects the proportion of successful matches, which induces some firms to exit the economy and causes unemployment to increase.

Suggested Citation

  • Demougin, Dominique & Helm, Carsten, 2011. "Job matching when employment contracts suffer from moral hazard," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 964-979.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:55:y:2011:i:7:p:964-979
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2011.04.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211100033X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2011.04.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "The First-Order Approach to Principal-Agent Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1357-1367, November.
    2. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    3. repec:bla:germec:v:7:y:2006:i::p:463-470 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Christopher J. Flinn, 2006. "Minimum Wage Effects on Labor Market Outcomes under Search, Matching, and Endogenous Contact Rates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 1013-1062, July.
    5. Pitchford, Rohan, 1998. "Moral hazard and limited liability: The real effects of contract bargaining," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 251-259, November.
    6. Pierre Cahuc & André Zylberberg, 2004. "Labor Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026203316x, April.
    7. Susanne Ohlendorf & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2012. "Repeated Moral Hazard And Contracts With Memory: The Case Of Risk‐Neutrality," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(2), pages 433-452, May.
    8. Albert van der Horst, 2003. "Structural Estimates of Equilibrium Unemployment in Six OECD Economies," Economics Working Papers 022, European Network of Economic Policy Research Institutes.
    9. Albert van der Horst, 2003. "Structural estimates of equilibrium unemployment in six OECD economies," CPB Discussion Paper 19, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    10. Albert van der Horst, 2003. "Structural estimates of equilibrium unemployment in six OECD economies," CPB Discussion Paper 19.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    11. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    12. Goerke, Laszlo, 2000. "On the structure of unemployment benefits in shirking models," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 283-295, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:old:wpaper:348 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Dittrich, Marcus & Städter, Silvio, 2015. "Moral hazard and bargaining over incentive contracts," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 75-85.
    3. Andriy Zapechelnyuk & Ro’i Zultan, 2020. "Job search costs and incentives," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 181-202, October.
    4. Demougin, Dominique & Helm, Carsten, 2023. "Overwhelmed by routine tasks: A multitasking principal agent perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 654-669.
    5. Eguchi, Kyota, 2014. "Employment protection and incentives: Severance pay vs. procedural inconvenience," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 272-290.
    6. Li Sanxi & Xiao Hao & Yao Dongmin, 2013. "Contract Bargaining with a Risk-Averse Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 285-301, November.
    7. Starmans, Jan, 2024. "Contracting and search with heterogeneous principals and agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    8. Carsten Helm & Dominique Demougin, 2012. "Incentive Contracts and Efficient Unemployment Benefits in a Globalized World," Working Papers V-348-12, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2012.
    9. repec:zbw:hohpro:348 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Demougin, Dominique M. & Helm, Carsten, 2008. "Incentive contracts and efficient unemployment benefits," Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 191, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics.
    2. Patrick Minford & Ruthira Naraidoo, 2010. "Vicious And Virtuous Circles – The Political Economy Of Unemployment," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 78(1), pages 1-22, March.
    3. repec:dar:wpaper:35490 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Katarzyna Budnik, 2012. "Do those who stay work less? On the impact of emigration on the measured TFP in Poland," NBP Working Papers 113, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    5. Ruud de Mooij, 2004. "Towards efficient unemployment insurance in the Netherlands," CPB Memorandum 100, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Matthias Lang, 2023. "Stochastic contracts and subjective evaluations," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(1), pages 104-134, March.
    7. Gavrel, Frédéric & Lebon, Isabelle & Rebière, Thérèse, 2010. "Wages, selectivity, and vacancies: Evaluating the short-term and long-term impact of the minimum wage on unemployment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1274-1281, September.
    8. Ruud de Mooij, 2004. "Towards efficient unemployment insurance in the Netherlands," CPB Memorandum 100.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    9. Leon Bettendorf & Albert van der Horst & Ruud A. De Mooij, 2009. "Corporate Tax Policy and Unemployment in Europe: An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(9), pages 1319-1347, September.
    10. Itza Tlaloc Quetzalcoatl Curiel-Cabral & Sonia Giannatale & Giselle Labrador-Badía, 2024. "Risk Aversion, Reservation Utility and Bargaining Power: An Evolutionary Algorithm Approximation of Incentive Contracts," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 63(2), pages 477-511, February.
    11. Darius Hinz & Camille Logeay, 2006. "Forecasting Employment for Germany," IMK Working Paper 01-2006, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute, revised Jan 2006.
    12. Alho, Kari & Nikula, Nuutti, 2007. "Productivity, Employment and Taxes - A SVAR Analysis of Trade-offs and Impacts," Discussion Papers 1074, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    13. Alho, Kari O.E. & Nikula, Nuutti, 2006. "Productivity, Empoyment and Taxes - Evidence on the Potential Trade-offs and Impacts in the EU," Discussion Papers 1054, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    14. Nieken, Petra & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2012. "Repeated moral hazard and contracts with memory: A laboratory experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 1000-1008.
    15. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John A. List, 2019. "How natural field experiments have enhanced our understanding of unemployment," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 33-39, January.
    16. Fabien Postel-Vinay & Jean-Marc Robin, 2004. "To Match or Not to Match? Optimal Wage Policy With Endogenous Worker Search Intensity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 297-330, April.
    17. Thiele, Veikko, 2007. "Performance measurement in multi-task agencies," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 148-163, September.
    18. Daniel Goller, 2023. "Analysing a built-in advantage in asymmetric darts contests using causal machine learning," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 649-679, June.
    19. P R Agénor, 2005. "The Analytics of Segmented Labor Markets," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 52, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    20. Lester Lusher & Geoffrey C. Schnorr & Rebecca L.C. Taylor, 2022. "Unemployment Insurance as a Worker Indiscipline Device? Evidence from Scanner Data," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 285-319, April.
    21. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Job design with conflicting tasks reconsidered," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 108-117.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Job matching; Incentive contracts; Unemployment benefits; Nash bargaining; Moral hazard;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:55:y:2011:i:7:p:964-979. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.