Competition and the Ratchet Effect
研究了劳动力市场中绩效工资下的棘轮效应，通过理论和实验发现竞争能显著削弱该效应，无论市场条件偏向企业还是工人。
In labor markets, the ratchet effect refers to a situation where workers subject to performance pay choose to restrict their output, because they rationally anticipate that firms will respond to higher output levels by raising output requirements or by cutting pay. We model this effect as a multiperiod principal-agent problem with hidden information and study its robustness to labor market competition both theoretically and experimentally. Consistent with our theoretical model, we observe substantial ratchet effects in the absence of competition, which are nearly eliminated when competition is introduced; this is true regardless of whether market conditions favor firms or workers.