Piece Rates, Fixed Wages and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment
基于一家植树公司的实地实验数据，比较计件工资与固定工资对工人生产率的影响，发现计件工资使生产率提升约20%，并利用结构计量方法将结果推广到实验条件之外。
Data from a field experiment are used to estimate the gain in productivity that is realized when workers are paid piece rates rather than fixed wages. The experiment was conducted within a tree-planting firm and provides daily observations on individual worker productivity under both compensation systems. Unrestricted statistical methods estimate the productivity gain to be 20%. Since planting conditions potentially affect incentives, structural econometric methods are used to generalize the experimental results to out-of-sample conditions. The structural results suggest that the average productivity gain, outside of the experimental conditions, would be at least 21.7%. Copyright 2004, Wiley-Blackwell.