IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/esprep/91640.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Personnel economics issues: What causes increasing work intensity, and what are the policy responses?

Author

Listed:
  • Josheski, Dushko

Abstract

In this paper the issue from personnel economics such as work intensity has been investigated. George Akerlof back in 1976 argued that the real life failed to correspond to the standard general equilibrium model set by Arrow-Debreu. In the real life information is neither complete nor it’s costless. In real life workers tend to work in harsh conditions, and put more efforts in order to receive better wages, also they have incentives to educate themselves more, as better educated employees are more productive. More productive means that they work faster as the rat’s race to the cheese and faster rats will get to the cheese first and get more cheese than slower rats. In reality workers do not want to share their output with slower workers. But it is because of bad norms that firms sets or taxes that government imposes that workers tend to work suboptimal i.e. work more than what is required in equilibrium, or work less than the equilibrium socially optimal required effort. The problem also arises when firms compare worker and pick ‘’average’’ worker, nowadays in OECD (rich) countries club, workers tend to get paid more and get spurious data on increased productivity and the measure average effort to be biased, so wage function will then be biased w=w (ē, t), wage is function of average effort and time needed to produce output.

Suggested Citation

  • Josheski, Dushko, 2014. "Personnel economics issues: What causes increasing work intensity, and what are the policy responses?," EconStor Preprints 91640, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:91640
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/91640/1/Seminar%203%20personnel%20dushko.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew E. Clark, 2005. "Your Money or Your Life: Changing Job Quality in OECD Countries," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 43(3), pages 377-400, September.
    2. Francis Green, 2002. "Why Has Work Effort Become More Intense?," Studies in Economics 0207, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    3. George Akerlof, 1976. "The Economics of Caste and of the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 599-617.
    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. Giovanna Boccuzzo & Licia Maron, 2017. "Proposal of a composite indicator of job quality based on a measure of weighted distances," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(5), pages 2357-2374, September.
    2. Nathalie Greenan & Ekaterina Kalugina & Emmanuelle Walkowiak, 2014. "Has the quality of working life improved in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2005?," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 23(2), pages 399-428.
    3. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00566139 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Männasoo, Kadri, 2022. "Working hours and gender wage differentials: Evidence from the American Working Conditions Survey," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Josh Lerner, 2002. "150 Years of Patent Protection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 221-225, May.
    6. Garey Ramey & Valerie A. Ramey, 2010. "The Rug Rat Race," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 41(1 (Spring), pages 129-199.
    7. Georges Steffgen & Philipp E. Sischka & Martha Fernandez de Henestrosa, 2020. "The Quality of Work Index and the Quality of Employment Index: A Multidimensional Approach of Job Quality and Its Links to Well-Being at Work," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-31, October.
    8. Wieteke Conen & Paul de Beer, 2021. "When two (or more) do not equal one: an analysis of the changing nature of multiple and single jobholding in Europe," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 27(2), pages 165-180, May.
    9. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Georgellis, Yannis & Tsitsianis, Nicholas & Yin, Ya Ping, 2009. "Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 42-51, February.
    10. Peter Skott, 2011. "Heterodox macro after the crisis," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2011-23, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    11. Emeric Henry, 2009. "Strategic Disclosure of Research Results: The Cost of Proving Your Honesty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(539), pages 1036-1064, July.
    12. Becker, Sascha O. & Rubin, Jared & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Religion in Economic History: A Survey," CEPR Discussion Papers 14894, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Magnus Hatlebakk, 2014. "Poverty Dynamics in Rural Orissa: Transitions in Assets and Occupations over Generations," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 877-893, June.
    14. Pieter Serneels, 2004. "The Nature of Unemployment in Urban Ethiopia," CSAE Working Paper Series 2004-01, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    15. Ingrid Bauer & Liudmila Zavolokina & Gerhard Schwabe, 2020. "Is there a market for trusted car data?," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 30(2), pages 211-225, June.
    16. Kjetil Haugen, 2023. "The doping dilemma is not the only dilemma in sport," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 40-48.
    17. Choy, James P., 2016. "Constructing Social Division to Support Cooperation," Economic Research Papers 269582, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    18. Frederick Guy & Peter Skott, 2008. "Power, Productivity, and Profits," Springer Books, in: Matthew Braham & Frank Steffen (ed.), Power, Freedom, and Voting, chapter 20, pages 385-403, Springer.
    19. Andrea Salvatori & Seetha Menon & Wouter Zwysen, 2018. "The effect of computer use on job quality: Evidence from Europe," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 200, OECD Publishing.
    20. Lawson, Nicholas & Spears, Dean, 2021. "Those who can't sort, steal: caste, occupational mobility, and rent-seeking in rural India," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 107-140, March.
    21. Eduardo Zambrano, 1999. "Formal Models Of Authority," Rationality and Society, , vol. 11(2), pages 115-138, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rat race equilibrium; labour market regulation policies; job satisfaction; workers performance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:esprep:91640. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.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.