does working from home work evidence from a chinese experiment about 10 of us employees now regularly work from home wfh but there are concerns this can lead to shirking from home we report the results of a wfh experiment at ctrip a 16 000 employee nasdaq listed chinese travel agency call center employees who volunteered to wfh were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office for 9 months home working led to a 13 performance increase of which about 9 was from working more minutes per shift fewer breaks and sick days and 4 from more calls per minute attributed to a quieter working environment home workers also reported improved work satisfaction and experienced less turnover but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell due to the success of the experiment ctrip rolled out the option to wfh to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to re select between the home or office interestingly over half of them switched which led to the gains from wfh almost doubling to 22 this highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like wfh

uncertain neighborhood effects and restrictive covenants abstract this paper provides a theoretical model and empirical analysis of private land use contracts in an urban housing market one contribution of our analysis lies in the explicit treatment of neighborhood externalities as uncertain processes the potential resident views the contractual obligation established by deed restrictions as credible commitment by unknown future neighbors to utilize their own property within the defined bounds thereby reducing the uncertainty or riskiness of future externality effects following this view we present a hedonic valuation model for deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants to tie housing consumption risk theory to the empirical hedonic method we then use a unique land use contracts data set to test the model implications

the peter principle a theory of decline some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted the peter principle which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process this view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the data below it is argued that ability appears lower after promotion purely as a statistical matter being promoted is evidence that a standard has been met regression to the mean implies that future ability will be lower on average firms optimally account for the regression bias in making promotion decisions but the effect is never eliminated rather than evidence of a mistake the peter principle is a necessary consequence of any promotion rule furthermore firms that take it into account appropriately adopt an optimal strategy usually firms inflate the promotion criterion to offset the peter principle effect and the more important the transitory component is relative to total variation in ability the larger

awards unbundled evidence from a natural field experiment organizations often use non monetary awards to incentivize performance awards may affect behavior through several mechanisms by conferring employer recognition by enhancing social visibility and by facilitating social comparison in a nationwide health worker training program in zambia we design a field experiment to unbundle these mechanisms we find that employer recognition and social visibility increase performance while social comparison reduces it especially for low ability trainees these effects appear when treatments are announced and persist through training the findings are consistent with a model of optimal expectations in which low ability individuals exert low effort in order to avoid information about their relative ability

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

the behavioralist visits the factory increasing productivity using simple framing manipulations recent discoveries in behavioral economics have led to important new insights concerning what can happen in markets such gains in knowledge have come primarily via laboratory experiments a missing piece of the puzzle in many cases is parallel evidence drawn from naturally occurring field counterparts we provide a small movement in this direction by taking advantage of a unique opportunity to work with a chinese high tech manufacturing facility our study revolves around using insights gained from one of the most influential lines of behavioral research framing manipulations in an attempt to increase worker productivity in the facility using a natural field experiment we report several insights for example conditional incentives framed as both losses and gains increase productivity for both individuals and teams in addition teams more acutely respond to bonuses posed as losses than as comparable bonuses posed as gains the magnitude of this framing effect is roughly 1 that is total team productivity is enhanced by 1 purely due to the framing manipulation importantly we find that neither the framing nor the incentive effect lose their significance over time rather the effects are observed over the entire sample period moreover we learn that repeated interaction with workers and conditionality of the bonus contract are substitutes for sustenance of incentive effects in the long run this paper was accepted by gerard p cachon decision analysis

social comparisons and contributions to online communities a field experiment on movielens we design a field experiment to explore the use of social comparison to increase contributions to an online community we find that after receiving behavioral information about the median user s total number of movie ratings users below the median demonstrate a 530 percent increase in the number of monthly movie ratings while those above the median decrease their ratings by 62 percent when given outcome information about the average user s net benefit score above average users mainly engage in activities that help others our findings suggest that effective personalized social information can increase the level of public goods provision

incentives for managers and inequality among workers evidence from a firm level experiment we present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower tier workers theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of workers productivity through two channels first managers respond to incentives by targeting their efforts towards more able workers implying that both the mean and the dispersion increase second managers select out the least able workers implying that the mean increases but the dispersion may decrease in our field experiment we find that the introduction of managerial performance pay raises both the mean and dispersion of worker productivity analysis of individual level productivity data shows that managers target their effort towards high ability workers and the least able workers are less likely to be selected into employment these results highlight the interplay between the provision of managerial incentives and earnings inequality among lower tier workers

the response to incentives and contractual efficiency evidence from a field experiment abstract we use data from a field experiment to estimate worker reaction to incentives and the optimality of piece rate contracts our estimate of the elasticity of output with respect to piece rates is 0 39 regression methods cannot predict performance under hypothetical contracts therefore we apply structural econometric methods without imposing profit maximization to evaluate observed contract optimality using profit as a metric we estimate the distance between observed and profit maximizing contracts to be negligible this suggests that observed contracts closely approximate optimal contracts under asymmetric information about worker ability under complete information the firm could increase expected profits by 14 percent keeping workers indifferent to the observed piece rate contract profits could increase between 44 and 49 percent if the firm exploited information about ability to reduce worker utility to the outside alternative

zoning and the distribution of location rents an empirical analysis of harris county texas the coase theorem presents two criteria for evaluating regulation regulations efficiency relative to private solutions and how the regulation affects the distribution of wealth previous studies of the impact of municipal zoning have focused on coase s first criteria whether zoning raises land values overall this study estimates the transfer of wealth between owners of existing homes that results from the creation of a municipal zoning ordinance we find that property best suited to residential use gains in value while property with relatively higher potential as commercial property experiences a decline in the value we find that zoning is distributive

a market for institutions assessing the impact of restrictive covenants on housing residential community associations rcas are quick becoming a common but controversial feature of the housing market supporters of rcas point to the rapid growth as a clear sign of their success in improving upon market failures rcas provide additional restrictions that can limit neighborhood externalities and reduce future consumption risk however critics contend that rcas create additional conflicts and push problems into other neighborhoods previous published empirical work on the impact of rca zoning has been limited in institutional detail and has not corrected for spatial autocorrelation this paper uses 1 487 single family sales in 2000 from greeley colorado and a unique dataset that includes information on rcas various use restrictions building restrictions and voting rules to investigate the impact of private zoning on the housing market a spatially corrected semi log hedonic model is employed to estimate the marginal price impacts the main model of interest finds that building restrictions no impact on prices while use restrictions increase prices furthermore the optimal voting decision rule is at an 80 percent supermajority but voting rights to first mortgage holders significantly reduces prices

gift giving and worker productivity evidence from a firm level experiment abstract we present results from a field experiment designed to measure worker response to a monetary gift from their employer the experiment took place inside a tree planting firm paying its workforce incentive contracts firm managers told a crew of tree planters they would receive a pay raise for one day as a result of a surplus not attributable to past planting productivity we compare planter productivity the number of trees planted per day on the day the gift was handed out with productivity on previous and subsequent days of planting on the same block and thus under similar planting conditions we find direct evidence that the gift had a significant and positive effect on daily planter productivity controlling for planter fixed effects weather conditions and other random daily shocks

measuring the price impact of municipal incorporation on homeowner associations this paper investigates the impact of municipal formation and subsequent change in land use restrictions on existing deed restricted subdivisions drss using a unique case in the suburbs of saint louis county the city of wildwood incorporated in 1995 even though a majority of houses were already in a homeowner association data was collected on single family housing sales from 1990 through 2000 and on characteristics of 830 drss using a hedonic model the surrounding 10 municipalities and unincorporated area results show a decline in drs premiums after incorporation however the decline seems to have been concentrated in lots larger than 1 acre

piece rates fixed wages and incentives evidence from a field experiment data from a field experiment are used to estimate the gain in productivity that is realized when workers are paid piece rates rather than fixed wages the experiment was conducted within a tree planting firm and provides daily observations on individual worker productivity under both compensation systems unrestricted statistical methods estimate the productivity gain to be 20 since planting conditions potentially affect incentives structural econometric methods are used to generalize the experimental results to out of sample conditions the structural results suggest that the average productivity gain outside of the experimental conditions would be at least 21 7

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

tournaments without prizes evidence from personnel records we use a quasi experimental research design to study the effect of giving workers feedback on their relative performance the setting is a firm in which workers are paid piece rates and where for exogenous reasons management begins to reveal to workers their relative position in the distribution of pay and productivity we find that merely providing this information leads to a large and long lasting increase in productivity that is costless to the firm our findings are consistent with the interpretation that workers incipient concerns about their relative standing are activated by information about how they are performing relative to others this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations

in search of workers real effort reciprocity a field and a laboratory experiment we present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage nor to a positive or negative peer comparison this result seems at odds with numerous laboratory experiments that show a clear own wage sensitivity on effort in an additional real effort laboratory experiment we show that explicit cost and surplus information that enables an exact calculation of an employer s surplus from the work contract is a crucial prerequisite for a positive wage effort relation this demonstrates that an employee s reciprocity requires a clear assessment of the surplus at stake jel c91 c92 j41

do subsidies work better in low income than in high income families survey on domestic energy efficient and renewable energy equipment purchase in china abstract domestic energy efficient and renewable energy eere equipment shows a great energy saving potential in household energy consumption two rounds of large scale financial subsidy programs have been developed in china since 2010 to promote the adoption of green equipment however how these subsidies attract chinese families of different income levels is not fully explored given this knowledge gap we conducted a self completion questionnaire survey in 2012 to ask 526 respondents about their purchase of domestic eere equipment we explored the effects of subsidy incentives and family incomes on the purchase attitudes and intentions of individuals toward the seven categories of eere equipment we find that family income positively moderates the relationship between eere equipment purchase attitude and behavioral intention and subsidy incentives positively affect the moderating effect of family income in other words a higher family income and better familiarization with subsidy incentives can promote the transformation of green attitudes into eere equipment purchasing intention the results may indicate that the subsidized prices are still high in the view of the low income families this study contributes to the understanding of the effects of chinese subsidy incentives and of the economic concerns of people about the purchase of domestic eere equipment

carrots that look like sticks toward an understanding of multitasking incentive schemes constructing compensation schemes for effort in multidimensional tasks is complex particularly when some dimensions are not easily observable when incentive schemes contractually reward workers for easily observed measures such as quantity produced the standard model predicts that unrewarded dimensions such as quality will be neglected yet there remains mixed empirical evidence in favor of this standard principal agent model prediction this article reconciles the literature using both theory and empirical evidence the theory outlines conditions under which principals can use a piece rate scheme to induce higher quantity and quality levels than analogous fixed wage schemes making use of a series of complementary laboratory and field experiments we show that this effect occurs because the agent is uncertain about the principal s monitoring ability and the principal s choice of a piece rate signals to the agent that she is efficient at monitoring

the effects of training on own and co worker productivity evidence from a field experiment this article identifies the effects of work related training on worker productivity by exploiting a field experiment that randomly assigns workers to treatment and control groups combined with data on worker performance before and after training we find that participation in the training programme leads to a 10 increase in performance moreover we provide experimental evidence for externalities from training an increase of 10 percentage points in the share of treated peers improves a worker s performance by 0 51 furthermore we find that the performance increase is not due to lower quality provided by the worker

what field experiments have and have not taught us about managing workers this paper reviews the field experimental evidence on firm employee relationships there is strong evidence that output rises in response to financial incentives but more mixed support for worker reciprocity in response to employer generosity non financial approaches such as worker recognition or adding meaning to mundane tasks can also increase output social relations are central to how firms function and have been shown to have an important impact on the design of incentive schemes what we do not know however far exceeds that which we have learned a broad swathe of important topics including recruiting worker promotion and training are virtually untouched thus far by field experiments

breaking monotony with meaning motivation in crowdsourcing markets abstract we conduct the first natural field experiment to explore the relationship between the meaningfulness of a task and worker effort we employed about 2500 workers from amazon s mechanical turk mturk an online labor market to label medical images although given an identical task we experimentally manipulated how the task was framed subjects in the meaningful treatment were told that they were labeling tumor cells in order to assist medical researchers subjects in the zero context condition the control group were not told the purpose of the task and in stark contrast subjects in the shredded treatment were not given context and were additionally told that their work would be discarded we found that when a task was framed more meaningfully workers were more likely to participate we also found that the meaningful treatment increased the quantity of output with an insignificant change in quality while the shredded treatment decreased the quality of output with no change in quantity we believe these results will generalize to other short term labor markets our study also discusses mturk as an exciting platform for running natural field experiments in economics

the economic theory of zoning a critical review municipal zoning regulations are the most important way in which local governments affect housing markets numerous studies have been undertaken to analyze the impact of zoning on housing and land prices on population density and on welfare however despite the volume of previous research there is little agreement on the effects of zoning or how to properly analyze those effects several papers have reviewed the empirical literature on zoning this review focuses on the theory of zoning specifically on how zoning is modeled especially whether zoning is embedded in an urban model and the implications derived from these models for the impact of zoning on welfare and housing prices we divide the effects of zoning on economic agents into six broad categories supply side effects demand side effects tiebout effects externality effects endogenous zoning and rent seeking behavior supply side effects concern how zoning affects the suppliers of housing services and the land market demand side effects concern how zoning affects consumers choice of the optimal consumption bundle especially the choice of housing characteristics tiebout effects result from consumer mo

performance promotion and the peter principle this paper considers why organizations use promotions rather than just monetary bonuses to motivate employees even though this may conflict with efficient assignment of employees to jobs when performance is unverifiable use of promotion reduces the incentive for managers to be affected by influence activities that would blunt the effectiveness of monetary bonuses when employees are risk neutral use of promotion for incentives need not distort assignments when they are risk averse it may sufficient conditions for this are given the distortion may be either to promote more employees than is efficient the peter principle effect or fewer

the importance of relative performance feedback information evidence from a natural experiment using high school students we study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece rate incentives a natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effect in a real effort setting for one year only students received information that allowed them to know whether they were above below the class average as well as the distance from this average we exploit a rich panel data set and find that the provision of this information led to an increase of 5 in students grades moreover the effect was significant for the whole distribution however once the information was removed the effect disappeared to rule out the concern that the effect may be driven by teachers within the school we verify our results using national level exams externally graded for the same students and the effect remains

the choice of functional form and variables in the hedonic price model in seoul this study demonstrates that the important part of exploring the proper functional form of the hedonic price model would include investigating a dissimilar and unique hedonic price structure when the hedonic price model is applied to different housing markets based on the adjustment to the usual technique necessitated by the regional and cultural setting of seoul the criteria for significance of implicit price root mean square percentage error and the log likelihood ratio test are applied to the choice of a useful functional form we conclude that investigating the structure of a local housing market and choosing proper variables reflecting regional and cultural characteristics both key parts of such a study require significant adjustment to the reality of seoul

job matching and occupational choice this paper presents a model of job matching the generalizes the existing literature by allowing for different jobs types or occupations such differences affect the value of job specific experience inducing a career profile where certain types are sampled before others more specifically the analysis shows that it is optimal for the young and inexperienced to gravitate toward jobs exhibiting a certain kind of risk then after deriving the equilibrium job turnover rate for an economy in which people do not switch occupations panel data are used to estimate its underlying parameters the hypothesis that people do not switch occupations is rejected against the alternative that they do thus providing empirical support for the theoretical extension undertaken here

do wage cuts damage work morale evidence from a natural field experiment employment contracts are often incomplete leaving many responsibilities subject to workers discretion high work morale is therefore essential for sustaining voluntary cooperation and high productivity in firms we conducted a field experiment to test whether workers reciprocate wage cuts and raises with low or high work productivity wage cuts had a detrimental and persistent impact on productivity reducing average output by more than 20 percent an equivalent wage increase however did not result in any productivity gains the results from an additional control experiment with high monetary performance incentives demonstrate that workers could still produce substantially more output leaving enough room for positive reactions altogether these results provide evidence consistent with a model of reciprocity as opposed to inequality aversion

the effect of a gated community on property and beach amenity valuation we examine how location in a gated community affects the value of a single family home and the valuation of a beach using data on 2 358 sales on barrier islands near charleston south carolina the empirical results indicate that homeowners pay a premium of 18 6 for a property in a gated community the value of location near a beach is greater in gated than nongated communities