Academic

Brandts & Charness on Labor Markets & Gift Exchange

By Lawrence Solum

Jordi Brandts and Gary Charness (Instituto de Analisis Economico (CSIC) Barcelona and University of California, Santa Barbara - Department of Economics) have posted Do Labour Market Conditions Affect Gift Exchange? Some Experimental Evidence on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

We study how two dimensions of market conditions affect behavior in experimental gift-exchange markets with repeated interaction. First, we consider the impact of competitive imbalance, by varying whether there is an excess supply of firms or an excess supply of workers in the market. Second, we impose a minimum wage in the market with an excess supply of workers, and study the overall effect on wages and productivity. Perhaps surprisingly, the state of competition does not appear to have strong effects in our data; however, there is some evidence of lower productivity when a minimum wage is imposed.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 25, 2009 (boomark / email).