演講者簡介 : Professor DeJarnette received his Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an Assistant Professor at National Taiwan University. His research fields are Experimental economics, labor economics, behavioral economics.
演講摘要 : This paper examines how past effort can impact current effort, such as when effort is reduced following an interruption. I study incentivized real-effort experiments in which both piece rates and leisure options were manipulated and find effort displays significant stickiness, even in the absence of switching costs. I demonstrate that this intertemporal evidence is indicative of effort "momentum", rather than on-the-job learning, reciprocity, or income targeting. When employing an instrumental variables (IV) approach, approximately 50% of the effort increase persists for 5 minutes after incentives return to baseline. Thus, if a worker suffers a complete interruption in productivity, it would take an average of 15 minutes to return to 90% of prior work effort. I further demonstrate that advanced knowledge does not significantly reduce this productivity loss. This finding of effort momentum is especially important for potential labor economics studies that intend to employ individual fixed effects.
