IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/15847.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

High Wages - An instrument inducing workers to work more?

Author

Listed:
  • Honekamp, Ivonne

Abstract

Wages and their effect on labour supply are not only an important subject for labour economists who aim at measuring substitution and income effects. Additionally, the government is interested in the impact of policy changes on the labour market and companies would like to know if it is possible to increase labour supply and especially productivity by increasing the wage rate. This paper introduces a dynamic version of the traditional model of labour supply and presents model extensions and the underlying behavioural assumptions arising from empirical findings, psychology and neuroscience. It evaluates findings and behavioural assumptions derived so far. None of the contributions investigated in this work is entirely free from criticism. The problem of analysing a comprehensive model of labour supply on the one hand, is the scarcity of suitable subjects to investigate and on the other hand, the individuality of each subject observed. With this work a critical analysis of existing research on labour supply decisions is provided. This shall contribute to motivate and ease future research in this area which has to take these problems into account.

Suggested Citation

  • Honekamp, Ivonne, 2007. "High Wages - An instrument inducing workers to work more?," MPRA Paper 15847, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 Jan 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:15847
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15847/1/MPRA_paper_15847.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Lorenz Goette & David Huffman & Ernst Fehr, 2004. "Loss Aversion and Labor Supply," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 216-228, 04/05.
    4. 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.
    5. Gerald Oettinger, 1997. "Daily Labor Supply of Stadium Vendors: An Empirical Analysis of Participation and Effort Decisions," Working Papers 762, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    6. repec:fth:prinin:383 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Dickinson, David L, 1999. "An Experimental Examination of Labor Supply and Work Intensities," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(4), pages 638-670, October.
    10. Götte, Lorenz & Huffman, David B., 2006. "Incentives and the Allocation of Effort Over Time: The Joint Role of Affective and Cognitive Decision Making," IZA Discussion Papers 2400, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    Full references (including those not matched with items 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. 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.
    2. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    3. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    4. Cosaert, Sam & Lefebvre, Mathieu & Martin, Ludivine, 2022. "Are preferences for work reference dependent or time nonseparable? New experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    5. Eggert, Håkan & Kahui, Viktoria, 2011. "Reference-dependent behaviour of paua (abalone) divers in New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 513, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    6. Götte, Lorenz & Huffman, David B., 2006. "Incentives and the Allocation of Effort Over Time: The Joint Role of Affective and Cognitive Decision Making," IZA Discussion Papers 2400, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Carpenter, Jeffrey, 2016. "The labor supply of fixed-wage workers: Estimates from a real effort experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 85-95.
    8. Martin, Vincent, 2017. "When to quit: Narrow bracketing and reference dependence in taxi drivers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 166-187.
    9. Pokorny, Kathrin, 2008. "Pay--but do not pay too much: An experimental study on the impact of incentives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 251-264, May.
    10. Sun, Hao & Wang, Hai & Wan, Zhixi, 2019. "Model and analysis of labor supply for ride-sharing platforms in the presence of sample self-selection and endogeneity," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 76-93.
    11. 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).
    12. Simon Gächter & Eric J. Johnson & Andreas Herrmann, 2022. "Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 599-624, April.
    13. Ahrens, Steffen & Pirschel, Inske & Snower, Dennis J., 2014. "A theory of wage adjustment under loss aversion," Kiel Working Papers 1977, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    14. Hogarth, Robin M. & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2014. "Ambiguous incentives and the persistence of effort: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 1-19.
    15. Alessandro Saia, 2022. "Trouble Underground: Demand Shocks and the Labor Supply Behavior of New York City Taxi Drivers," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, March.
    16. 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.
    17. Zubrickas, Robertas, 2023. "The relative income effect and labor supply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 176-184.
    18. Koch, Alexander K. & Nafziger, Julia, 2011. "Goals and Psychological Accounting," IZA Discussion Papers 5802, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Håkan Eggert & Viktoria Kahui, 2013. "Reference-dependent behaviour of paua (abalone) divers in New Zealand," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(12), pages 1571-1582, April.
    20. Steffen Andersen & Alec Brandon & Uri Gneezy & John List, 2014. "Toward an Understanding of Reference-Dependent Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment," Framed Field Experiments 00392, The Field Experiments Website.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    high wages; analysis; labour supply decision; labour supply model; intertemporal labour supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

    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:pra:mprapa:15847. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.