[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1045.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Malfeasance in Long Term Employment Contracts: A New General Model with an Application to Unionism

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Kuhn
Abstract
This paper argues that the structure of long-term employment contractsis influenced by the possibility that at least four different kinds of opportunistic behavior, or "malfeasance,"may occur in them. While the consequences of some of these problems have been examined in various papers,no single model has yet treated all four and thus brought out their essential symmetry. In particular, a certain kind of malfeasance by firms has apparently been universally overlooked-an oversight we try to remedy by developing a simple model here. Other advantages of the present model are that, unlike other models, it endogenizes the path of both sides of the contract -wages and effort -and has fairly intuitive first-order conditions. It also shows how earlier conclusions, such as the notion that wages are likely to rise faster than marginal products in equilibrium, are the results of less-than-general model specification, and has some interesting implications when applied to unionism: by proposing that unions act as workers'equivalent to certain contract enforcement policies like the disciplinary dismissals used by firms, it provides what is to the author's knowledge the only consistent theoretical explanation of the quite commonly observed U-shaped pattern of the union wage effect by age and shows how unions might play a positive efficiency role in this regard.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Kuhn, 1982. "Malfeasance in Long Term Employment Contracts: A New General Model with an Application to Unionism," NBER Working Papers 1045, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1045
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1045.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Lazear, Edward P, 1979. "Why Is There Mandatory Retirement?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1261-1284, December.
    3. Hall, Robert E & Lazear, Edward P, 1984. "The Excess Sensitivity of Layoffs and Quits to Demand," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 233-257, April.
    4. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-641, August.
    5. Yoram Ben-Porath, 1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 352-352.
    6. Masanori Hashimoto & Ben T. Yu, 1980. "Specific Capital, Employmemt Contracts, and Wage Rigidity," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 536-549, Autumn.
    7. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    8. Richard B. Freeman, 1978. "The Effect of Trade Unionism on Fringe Benefits," NBER Working Papers 0292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Azariadis, Costas, 1975. "Implicit Contracts and Underemployment Equilibria," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(6), pages 1183-1202, December.
    10. Grossman, Herschel I., 1978. "Risk shifting, layoffs, and seniority," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 661-686, November.
    11. James L. Medoff & Katharine G. Abraham, 1981. "Involuntary Terminations under Explicit and Implicit Employment Contracts," NBER Working Papers 0634, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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 P, 1984. "Incentives and Wage Rigidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 339-344, May.
    2. Joseph S. Tracy, 1986. "Seniority Rules and the Gains from Union Organization," NBER Working Papers 2039, 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. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:789-848 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:305-355 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2291-2372 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Kandel, Eugene & Pearson, Neil D., 2001. "Flexibility versus Commitment in Personnel Management," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 515-556, December.
    6. Lazear, Edward P, 1984. "Incentives and Wage Rigidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 339-344, May.
    7. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    8. Paul Hek & Daniel Vuuren, 2011. "Are older workers overpaid? A literature review," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(4), pages 436-460, August.
    9. Martin Abraham & Bernhard Prosch, 2000. "Long-Term Employment Relationships By Credible Commitments," Rationality and Society, , vol. 12(3), pages 283-306, August.
    10. Edward P. Lazear, 1983. "Raids and Imitation," NBER Working Papers 1158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    12. Rosen, Sherwin, 1983. "Unemployment and insurance," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 5-49, January.
    13. André Zylberberg, 1994. "Effort et contrats : quelques enseignements concernant le marché du travail," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 113(2), pages 1-20.
    14. Bruce A. Rayton, 2010. "Labour Economics and Human Resource Management," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2439-2483 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Kuhn, Johan Moritz, 2007. "My Pay is Too Bad (I Quit). Your Pay is Too Good (You're Fired)," Working Papers 07-5, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    17. Chen, Yu-Fu & Zoeg, Gylfi, 2011. "Life-Cycle, Effort and Academic Inactivity," SIRE Discussion Papers 2011-27, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    18. Rafael Tenorio, 2000. "The Economics of Professional Boxing Contracts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(4), pages 363-384, November.
    19. Lloyd Ulman, 1992. "Why Should Human Resource Managers Pay High Wages?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 177-212, June.
    20. Uwe JIRJAHN & Stephen C. SMITH, 2018. "Nonunion Employee Representation: Theory And The German Experience With Mandated Works Councils," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(1), pages 201-233, March.
    21. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    22. Mengistae, Taye, 1999. "The relative effects of skill formation and job matching on wage growth in Ethiopia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2104, The World Bank.
    23. John Haltiwanger & Michael Waldman, 1984. "Insurance Aspects of Labor Market Contracting: An Overview," UCLA Economics Working Papers 348, UCLA Department of Economics.
    24. Wu, Qin & Bayer, Ralph-C & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2020. "Conditional Pension Funds to Combat Cheating in Sporting Contests: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    25. MacLeod, W. Bentley, 1992. "Les contrats auto-exécutoires et la théorie des institutions du marché du travail," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 68(3), pages 433-451, septembre.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:1045. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.