An Empirical Analysis of Employee Responses to Bonuses and Penalties
利用中国电子芯片制造商的专有数据，研究员工对奖金和惩罚的反应，发现惩罚对后续努力和绩效的影响更强，但边际敏感性下降更快，且惩罚会增加员工离职率，尤其是高技能高质量员工。
ABSTRACT We examine how employees respond to bonuses and penalties using a proprietary dataset from an electronic chip manufacturer in China. First, we examine the relative effects of bonuses and penalties and observe a stronger effect on subsequent effort and performance for penalties than for bonuses. Second, we find that the marginal sensitivity of penalties diminishes faster than that of bonuses, indicating that the marginal effect of a bonus may eventually exceed that of a penalty as their value increases. Third, we find an undesirable selection effect of penalties: penalties increase employee turnover, especially for skillful and high-quality workers. These results may help inform our understanding of the observed limited use of penalties in practice due to their bounded effectiveness and possible unintended consequences. Data Availability: The confidentiality agreement with the company that provided data for this study precludes the dissemination of detailed data without the company's consent.