Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracts Inside the Firm
利用印度服装厂数据，研究管理者如何通过关系契约应对工人缺勤冲击，发现工人借调行为符合关系契约理论，但许多潜在收益因管理者关系网络有限而未能实现。
Abstract We study relational contracts among managers using unique data that tracks transfers of workers across teams in Indian ready-made garment factories. We focus on how relational contracts help managers cope with worker absenteeism shocks, which are frequent, often large, weakly correlated across teams, and which substantially reduce team productivity. Together these facts imply gains from sharing workers. We show that managers respond to shocks by lending and borrowing workers in a manner consistent with relational contracting, but many potentially beneficial transfers are unrealized. This is because managers’ primary relationships are with a very small subset of potential partners. A borrowing event studies around main trading partners’ separations from the firm reinforces the importance of relationships. We show robustness to excluding worker moves least likely to reflect relational borrowing responses to idiosyncratic absenteeism shocks. Counterfactual simulations reveal large gains to reducing costs associated with forming and maintaining additional relationships among managers.