IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lvl/laeccr/9702.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fixed Wages, Piece Rates, and Intertemporal Productivity: a Study of tree Planters in British Columbia

Author

Listed:
  • Paarsch, Harry J.
  • Shearer, Bruce

    (Universite Laval, Departement d'economique)

Abstract

We examine the effects of different sequences of work and rest on the daily productivity of workers who planted trees in the province of British Columbia, Canada, comparing the intertemporal productivity profiles of planters who were paid either fixed wages or piece rates. We find that planters who are paid piece rates produce more, on average, than those who are paid fixed wages, but that the productivity of piece-rate planters falls with the number of consecutive days worked; the fall in productivity is between three and five percent per day. Fixed-wage planters, on the other hand, showed no such decreases.

Suggested Citation

  • Paarsch, Harry J. & Shearer, Bruce, 1997. "Fixed Wages, Piece Rates, and Intertemporal Productivity: a Study of tree Planters in British Columbia," Cahiers de recherche 9702, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    • Handle: RePEc:lvl:laeccr:9702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecn.ulaval.ca/w3/recherche/cahiers/1997/9702.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paarsch, Harry J & Shearer, Bruce, 2000. "Piece Rates, Fixed Wages, and Incentive Effects: Statistical Evidence from Payroll Records," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(1), pages 59-92, February.
    2. Edward P. Lazear & Paul Oyer, 2012. "Personnel Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    3. Charles Brown, 1992. "Wage Levels and Method of Pay," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 366-375, Autumn.
    4. Edward P. Lazear, 1995. "Personnel Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121883, April.
    5. Lazear, Edward P, 1986. "Salaries and Piece Rates," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 405-431, July.
    6. Marcel Boyer, 1997. "Competition and Access in Telecoms: ECPR, Global Price Cap, and Auctions," CIRANO Working Papers 97s-03, CIRANO.
    7. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    8. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Mohamed Salah Matoussi, 1995. "Moral Hazard, Financial Constraints and Sharecropping in El Oulja," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(3), pages 381-399.
    9. Cheung, Steven N S, 1969. "Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 23-42, April.
    10. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    11. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    12. Charles Brown, 1990. "Firms' Choice of Method of Pay," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(3), pages 165-1-182-, April.
    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. Lazear, Edward, 2003. "Output-Based Pay: Incentives, Retention or Sorting?," IZA Discussion Papers 761, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    3. Angelova, Vera & Giebe, Thomas & Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, 2022. "Competition and fatigue," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 236-249.
    4. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2005. "Social Preferences and the Response to Incentives: Evidence from Personnel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 917-962.
    5. Oriana Bandiera (STICERD & LSE, 2004. "Relative and Absolute Incentives: Evidence on Worker Productivity," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 277, Econometric Society.
    6. Edward P. Lazear, 1999. "Output-based Pay: Incentives or Sorting?," NBER Working Papers 7419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Paarsch, Harry J & Shearer, Bruce, 2000. "Piece Rates, Fixed Wages, and Incentive Effects: Statistical Evidence from Payroll Records," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(1), pages 59-92, February.
    2. Felipe Balmaceda, 2004. "Uncertainty, Pay for Performance and Adverse Selection in a Competitive Labor Market," Documentos de Trabajo 196, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    3. Erling Barth & Bernt Bratsberg & Torbjørn Hægeland & Oddbjørn Raaum, 2008. "Performance Pay and Within-Firm Wage Inequality," Discussion Papers 535, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    4. Henneberger, Fred & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2007. "Performance Pay, Sorting, and Outsourcing," IZA Discussion Papers 3019, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Felipe Balmaceda, "undated". "Compensation Methods in Competitive Labor Markets," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv118, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    6. McCausland, David & Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2005. "Some are Punished and Some are Rewarded: A Study of the Impact of Performance Pay on Job Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 14243, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Lazear, Edward, 2003. "Output-Based Pay: Incentives, Retention or Sorting?," IZA Discussion Papers 761, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Bryson, Alex & Clark, Andrew E. & Freeman, Richard B. & Green, Colin P., 2016. "Share capitalism and worker wellbeing," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 151-158.
    9. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    10. Edward P. Lazear & Kathryn L. Shaw, 2007. "Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 91-114, Fall.
    11. Alberto Bayo-Moriones & Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez & Sara Martinez-de-Morentin, 2017. "Performance Measurement and Incentive Intensity," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 496-546, December.
    12. Christian Pfeifer, 2014. "Base Salaries, Bonus Payments, and Work Absence among Managers in a German Company," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 61(5), pages 523-536, November.
    13. Bloom, Nicholas & Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Human Resource Management and Productivity," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 19, pages 1697-1767, Elsevier.
    14. Felipe Balmaceda, 2002. "Compensation Methods in a Competitive Labor Market: the Role of Asymmetric Information," Documentos de Trabajo 139, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    15. Daniel Parent, 2009. "The effect of pay-for-performance contracts on wages," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 269-295, May.
    16. Edward P. Lazear, 1999. "Personnel Economics: Past Lessons and Future Directions," NBER Working Papers 6957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Keith Bender & Colin Green & John Heywood, 2012. "Piece rates and workplace injury: Does survey evidence support Adam Smith?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 569-590, January.
    18. Hart, Robert A., 2005. "Piecework versus Timework in British Wartime Engineering," IZA Discussion Papers 1593, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Daniel Parent, 2001. "Incentive Pay in the United States: Its Determinants and Its Effects," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-04, CIRANO.
    20. Cornelissen, Thomas & Heywood, John S. & Jirjahn, Uwe, 2011. "Performance pay, risk attitudes and job satisfaction," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 229-239, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Compensation Systems; Productivity; Rest; Recuperation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    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:lvl:laeccr:9702. 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: Manuel Paradis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delvlca.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.