A growing number of firms offer compensation packages that link pay to performance. The aim is to motivate workers to be more efficient while also increasing their attachment to the company, thereby reducing turnover and absenteeism. The effects of performance-related pay on productivity depend on the scheme type and design, with individual incentives showing the largest effect. Governments often offer tax breaks and financial incentives to promote performance-related pay, though their desirability has been questioned due to large deadweight losses involved. The diffusion of remote work will increase the relevance of performance-related pay.
The effects on employment of the recent economic crisis have become evident and persistent in many OECD countries, exacerbating on the one hand the demand for more flexibility by the firms; on the other the need to ensure workers security. 'Flexicurity', an institutional frame implementing a progressive flexibility of the labor market and at the same time guaranteeing its stability, has been defined as a successful model at the EU level before the crisis. The objective of this paper is therefore to empirically assess the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on workers' job satisfaction using individual-level data from the longitudinal Swiss Household Panel (SHP), related to temporary and permanent employees in Switzerland for the period 2005 to 2011. Switzerland provides a particularly appropriate market to examine the potential effects of flexicurity type arrangements due to the relatively high incidence of flexible employment contracts. To this end, the sample of workers is disaggregated into different groups according to their employment contract and their perceived job security; we therefore analyse whether workers who are heterogeneous in terms of both the type of labour contract and their perceived security do also differ with regard to life satisfaction and specific aspects of the job satisfaction. Usually satisfaction variables, given the ordinal nature of the dependent variable, are analysed using ordered probit models. Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2006), however, developed a procedure, called Probit (OLS) or POLS, that consists in transforming an ordinal dependent variable in a "pseudo" continuous one, and allows the application of a linear model. With longitudinal data the POLS method permits for the inclusion of individual level fixed effects. Our methodology at first estimates a linear fixed effects model, thus controlling for unobserved time-invariant characteristics, while in a second step we implement a two-stage model to control for endogeneity. We also extend our analysis and seek to identify how insecurity affects temporary workers compared to permanent workers examining the impact of regional labour market conditions: we examine the effects on relative satisfaction and perceptions of security on workers in the seven Swiss statistical regions. First results show that job stability and perceived security are not necessary associated, and that job satisfaction is relatively low, mainly when perceived job security is low. The relationship between wellbeing and job security also varies according to regional employment conditions. This indicates that the duration of the contract may be less important if the worker perceives that he is not at risk of unemployment; in this regard, from a policy point of view, a greater 'flexicurity' can be obtained either directly from employer, adopting changes in work organization, or indirectly by policy makers through an appropriate mix of active labour market policies.
This paper investigates the causal effect of a switch from fixed wages to collective performance-related pay on firm productivity, exploiting an exogenous variation in the institutional environment regulating collective bargaining. We find that the introduction of collective performance related pay significantly increases productivity by around 3-5 per cent, but such effect varies greatly by firm size, industry and union density. We show that the design of the PRP scheme - in terms of number and type of parameters used - is also relevant for firm productivity.
In recent years many countries of the European Union (EU) have implemented comprehensive smoking bans to reduce exposure to tobacco smoke in public places and all indoor workplaces. Despite the intense public debate, research on the impact of smoking regulation on health, particularly within the workplace, is still very limited. In this paper, we use a Diff-in-Diff approach and comparable micro-data - for a large number of European countries - to evaluate the impact of national comprehensive smoking bans on both perceived workers' health and presence of respiratory problems within workplaces. Results show that the introduction of comprehensive smoking bans has a significant effect on workers' perceived health, particularly on the probability of exposure to smoke and fumes, also controlling for risk exposure. We also highlight some unintended effects of smoking bans in terms of mental distress, which counteract the positive impact on risk exposure and physical health. The impact across countries is shown to vary with the degree of strictness of the bans.
In this paper we investigate regional public–private wage differentials in Italy. Following the recent wave of reforms that significantly changed wage setting and employment relations in both sectors—increasing decentralization in collective bargaining and enforcing a 'privatization' of public sector employment contracts—we present new estimates of the public–private wage gap by geographical location. We report both 'standardized' public–private wage differentials and estimates obtained using geographically weighted regression methods. We show that significant differences exist in public–private wage differentials across Italian regions, and that the latter can be partly explained by local labour market conditions affecting the private sector and only marginally the public sector. Differences in public–private wage differentials across regions are expected to determine several imbalances in terms of 'wait' unemployment and recruitment problems in the different areas.
This book focuses on the specific traits and nature of entrepreneurial human capital and the extent to which it can be stimulated by entrepreneurship education - especially when these activities combine collaborative practices and innovation. It includes a comprehensive collection of articles on how entrepreneurship education can be structured, providing theoretical reflections as well as empirical evidence. As such it contributes to the ongoing debate on the teachability of entrepreneurial skills and the role of innovation and collaboration in the design of educational programs that aim to spread entrepreneurial human capital.
"In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir die Funktionsweise regionaler Arbeitsmärkte in Italien und Deutschland für verschiedene Arbeitnehmergruppen und Regionen. Wir leiten theoretische Hypothesen über gruppenspezifische Korrelationen zwischen regionaler Arbeitslosigkeit und individuellen Löhnen ab, wobei wir zwischen den einzelnen Regionen unterscheiden. Anhand von auf die lokalen Arbeitslosenquoten abgestimmten Mikrodaten stellen wir Einkommensgleichungen auf und unterziehen sie einer empirischen Überprfung. Für Italien konnten wir keine Anzeichen für eine Beziehung zwischen Löhnen und lokaler Arbeitslosigkeit feststellen. In Deutschland scheinen die Ergebnisse von der Spezifikation des Modells und von der Art der Arbeitnehmer abzuhängen. In beiden Ländern variiert die Reaktion der Löhne auf die lokale Arbeitslosigkeit signifikant entlang der Lohnverteilung, wobei im Bereich der medianen Quantile die höchste Sensitivität festzustellen ist. " (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)
