Does pay inequality affect worker effort? An assessment of experimental designs and evidence
本文构建理论框架评估现有实验设计能否识别薪酬不平等对员工努力的影响，发现未控制互惠、收入目标等混淆因素会导致误判，并提出改进实验识别的建议。
This paper develops a theoretical framework to think about employees' effort choices, and applies this framework to assess the ability of existing experimental designs to identify the effect of pay inequality on worker effort. The analysis shows that failure to control for a number of confounds—such as reciprocity towards the employer in multi-lateral gift-exchange games (vertical fairness), or the incentive to increase effort when feeling underpaid under piece rates (income targeting)—may lead to inaccurate interpretation of evidence of treatment effects. In light of these findings, the paper provides a set of recommendations on how to improve identification in the design of controlled experiments in the future.