Anatomy of a Contract Change / Rajshri Jayaraman, Debraj Ray, Francis de Vericourt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jayaraman, Rajshri.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ray, Debraj.

de Vericourt, Francis.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w19849.

NBER working paper series no. w19849

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

We study a contract change for tea pluckers on an Indian plantation, with a higher government-stipulated baseline wage. Incentive piece rates were lowered or kept unchanged. Yet, in the following month, output increased by 20-80%. This response contradicts the standard model and several variants, is only partly explicable by greater supervision, and appears to be "behavioral." But in subsequent months, the increase is comprehensively reversed. Though not an unequivocal indictment of "behavioral" models, these findings suggest that non-standard responses may be ephemeral, and should ideally be tracked over an extended period of time.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2014.