Partial Gift Exchange in an Experimental Labor Market: Impact of Subject Population Differences, Productivity Differences, and Effort Requests on Behavior
通过礼物交换实验，发现工人工资越高努力越多，但本科生比MBA学生努力少，原因可能是工作经验不同；非约束性努力要求能提高本科生整体努力，但低生产率企业的高工资并未换来更多努力。
We report a gift exchange experiment. Firms make wage offers; workers respond by determining an effort level. Higher effort is more costly to workers, and firms have no mechanism for punishing or rewarding workers. Consistent with the gift exchange hypothesis, workers provide more effort at higher wages, but undergraduates provide substantially less effort than MBAs. Evidence suggests this results from differences in prior work experience. Firms' nonbinding effort requests are at least partially honored, resulting in increased overall effort for undergraduates. Although higher wages are relatively more costly for lower productivity firms, workers do not provide them with more effort.