Can Offering a Signing Bonus Motivate Effort? Experimental Evidence of the Moderating Effects of Labor Market Competition
通过实验研究劳动力市场竞争如何调节签约奖金作为信任信号对工人努力的影响，发现工人过剩时签约奖金更有效，但效果可能不持久。
ABSTRACT Employers often rely on informal controls such as trust to motivate organizationally desirable behaviors from their workers by appealing to the latter's reciprocity. Notably, trust and reciprocity can promote a “gift exchange” between employers and workers. Using an experiment, I investigate whether labor market competition moderates the emergence of a gift exchange in labor markets in which signing bonus offers serve as a potential signal of trust and the duration of the employment relationship is endogenously determined. I find that offering a signing bonus more positively affects both workers' beliefs about the employer's trust in them and their effort when there is an excess supply of workers than when there is an excess demand for workers. I also find that the initial effects of signing bonuses may not persist over time. Additional analyses suggest that both employers' and workers' expectations may affect whether and how trust and reciprocity develop over time.