IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v202y2022icp471-497.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Salary disclosure and individual effort: Evidence from the National Hockey League

Author

Listed:
  • Flynn, James

Abstract

In late January, 1990, the salary of every National Hockey League (NHL) player was suddenly disclosed, ending a decades-long culture of pay secrecy. I find that underpaid players respond to this new information by reallocating effort from defense to offense, which is more highly compensated within the league. Underpaid players begin scoring more, but allow their teams to get scored on by even more than the additional goals they provide. Asymmetrically, overpaid players do not become more defensive-minded. Consistent with reference-dependent utility theory, I find suggestive evidence that this shift is more pronounced for underpaid players who play for teams with higher overall payrolls, as these players likely have a larger discrepancy between their actual salary and their reference point.

Suggested Citation

  • Flynn, James, 2022. "Salary disclosure and individual effort: Evidence from the National Hockey League," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 471-497.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:202:y:2022:i:c:p:471-497
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.08.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122002888
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.08.014?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. Emily Breza & Supreet Kaur & Yogita Shamdasani, 2018. "The Morale Effects of Pay Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 611-663.
    2. Colin Camerer & Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein & Richard Thaler, 1997. "Labor Supply of New York City Cabdrivers: One Day at a Time," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 407-441.
    3. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1990. "The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 255-283.
    4. Johannes Abeler & Armin Falk & Lorenz Goette & David Huffman, 2011. "Reference Points and Effort Provision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 470-492, April.
    5. David Card & Alexandre Mas & Enrico Moretti & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2981-3003, October.
    6. Gerald S. Oettinger, 1999. "An Empirical Analysis of the Daily Labor Supply of Stadium Vendors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 360-392, April.
    7. Alexandre Mas, 2017. "Does Transparency Lead to Pay Compression?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1683-1721.
    8. Vincent P. Crawford & Juanjuan Meng, 2011. "New York City Cab Drivers' Labor Supply Revisited: Reference-Dependent Preferences with Rational-Expectations Targets for Hours and Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1912-1932, August.
    9. Patrick Bolton & José Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2006. "Executive Compensation and Short-Termist Behaviour in Speculative Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 577-610.
    10. Ori Heffetz & John A. List, 2014. "Is The Endowment Effect An Expectations Effect?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(5), pages 1396-1422, October.
    11. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    12. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    13. Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2007. "Do Workers Work More if Wages Are High? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 298-317, March.
    14. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
    15. Michael Baker & Yosh Halberstam & Kory Kroft & Alexandre Mas & Derek Messacar, 2023. "Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 157-183, April.
    16. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2015. "Fair Wages and Effort Provision: Combining Evidence from a Choice Experiment and a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1777-1794, August.
    17. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    18. Mishra, Chandra S. & McConaughy, Daniel L. & Gobeli, David H., 2000. "Effectiveness of CEO pay-for-performance," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13.
    19. Godechot, Olivier & Senik, Claudia, 2015. "Wage comparisons in and out of the firm. Evidence from a matched employer–employee French database," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 395-410.
    20. Bartling, Björn & von Siemens, Ferdinand A., 2011. "Wage inequality and team production: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-16, February.
    21. Marlene Kim, 2015. "Pay Secrecy and the Gender Wage Gap in the United States," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 648-667, October.
    22. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    23. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    24. Anat Bracha & Uri Gneezy & George Loewenstein, 2015. "Relative Pay and Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 297-315.
    25. Tomasz Obloj & Todd Zenger, 2020. "The Influence of Pay Transparency on Inequity, Inequality, and the Performance-Basis of Pay in Organizations," Working Papers hal-02896651, HAL.
    26. Charles Sprenger, 2015. "An Endowment Effect for Risk: Experimental Tests of Stochastic Reference Points," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(6), pages 1456-1499.
    27. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Benedikt Herrmann & Frédéric Schneider, 2014. "Social Comparison And Effort Provision: Evidence From A Field Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 877-898, August.
    28. Fliessbach, Klaus & Weber, Bernd & Trautner, P. & Dohmen, Thomas J. & Sunde, Uwe & Elger, C. E. & Falk, Armin, 2007. "Social comparison affects reward-related brain activity in the human ventral striatum," Munich Reprints in Economics 20362, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    29. Kaffine, Daniel T. & Davis, Graham A., 2017. "A multi-row deletion diagnostic for influential observations in small-sample regressions," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 133-145.
    30. Alexandre Mas, 2006. "Pay, Reference Points, and Police Performance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 783-821.
    31. Gary Charness & Peter Kuhn, 2007. "Does Pay Inequality Affect Worker Effort? Experimental Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(4), pages 693-723.
    32. Chandra S Mishra & Daniel L McConaughy & David H Gobeli, 2000. "Effectiveness of CEO pay‐for‐performance," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13, March.
    33. Jonathan Chapman & Pietro Ortoleva & Erik Snowberg & Colin Camerer & Mark Dean, 2017. "Willingness-To-Pay and Willingness-To-Accept are Probably Less Correlated than You Think," CESifo Working Paper Series 6492, CESifo.
    34. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01314331 is not listed on IDEAS
    35. Henry S. Farber, 2005. "Is Tomorrow Another Day? The Labor Supply of New York City Cabdrivers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 46-82, February.
    36. Cardella, Eric & Roomets, Alex, 2022. "Pay distribution preferences and productivity effects: An experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    37. Keith M. Marzilli Ericson & Andreas Fuster, 2011. "Expectations as Endowments: Evidence on Reference-Dependent Preferences from Exchange and Valuation Experiments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1879-1907.
    38. Smith, Alec, 2019. "Lagged beliefs and reference-dependent utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 331-340.
    39. J. Solnick, Sara & Hemenway, David, 1998. "Is more always better?: A survey on positional concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 373-383, November.
    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. Fongoni, Marco, 2024. "Does pay inequality affect worker effort? An assessment of experimental designs and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 697-716.
    2. Marco Fongoni & Daniel Schaefer & Carl Singleton, 2023. "When are wages cut? The roles of incomplete contracts and employee involvement," AMSE Working Papers 2303, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    3. Rachel Scarfe & Carl Singleton & Adesola Sunmoni & Paul Telemo, 2024. "The age‐wage‐productivity puzzle: Evidence from the careers of top earners," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 584-606, April.
    4. Fongoni, Marco, 2024. "Does pay inequality affect worker effort? An assessment of experimental designs and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 697-716.

    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. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    2. Nickolas Gagnon & Riccardo D. Saulle & Henrik W. Zaunbrecher, 2021. "Decreasing Incomes Increase Selfishness," Papers 2107.02888, arXiv.org.
    3. Zaunbrecher, Henrik & Gagnon, Nickolas, 2020. "Declining Wages Increase Selfish Redistribution in an Environment with Fixed Income Inequality," Research Memorandum 023, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. Smith, Alec, 2019. "Lagged beliefs and reference-dependent utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 331-340.
    5. Cardella, Eric & Roomets, Alex, 2022. "Pay distribution preferences and productivity effects: An experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    6. Axel Ockenfels & Dirk Sliwka & Peter Werner, 2015. "Bonus Payments and Reference Point Violations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(7), pages 1496-1513, July.
    7. Alex Markle & George Wu & Rebecca White & Aaron Sackett, 2018. "Goals as reference points in marathon running: A novel test of reference dependence," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 19-50, February.
    8. Fongoni, Marco, 2024. "Does pay inequality affect worker effort? An assessment of experimental designs and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 697-716.
    9. Heiko Karle & Dirk Engelmann & Martin Peitz, 2022. "Student performance and loss aversion," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(2), pages 420-456, April.
    10. Schwerter, Frederik, 2013. "Social Reference Points and Risk Taking," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 11/2013, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    11. John Sseruyange & Erwin Bulte, 2020. "Wage Differentials and Workers’ Effort: Experimental Evidence from Uganda," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 647-668, June.
    12. Jose Rojas-Fallas & J. Forrest Williams, 2020. "Wage Differences Matter: An Experiment of Social Comparison and Effort Provision when Wages Increase or Decrease," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Schwerter, Frederik, 2015. "Social Reference Points and Risk Taking," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112889, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Cadsby, C. Bram & Song, Fei & Zubanov, Nick, 2024. "Working more for more and working more for less: Labor supply in the gain and loss domains," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    15. Zhihua Li & Songfa Zhong, 2023. "Reference Dependence in Intertemporal Preference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 475-490, January.
    16. Christian Grund & Johannes Martin, 2017. "Monetary Reference Points of Managers – Empirical Evidence of Status Quo Preferences and Social Comparisons," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(1), pages 70-87, February.
    17. Adhvaryu, Achyuta & Nyshadham, Anant & Xu, Huayu, 2023. "Hostel takeover: Living conditions, reference dependence, and the well-being of migrant workers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    18. Zubrickas, Robertas, 2023. "The relative income effect and labor supply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 176-184.
    19. Björn Bartling & Leif Brandes & Daniel Schunk, 2015. "Expectations as Reference Points: Field Evidence from Professional Soccer," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(11), pages 2646-2661, November.
    20. Chang, Tom & Gross, Tal, 2014. "How many pears would a pear packer pack if a pear packer could pack pears at quasi-exogenously varying piece rates?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 1-17.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:jeborg:v:202:y:2022:i:c:p:471-497. 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/jebo .

    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.