Abstract
Motivated by real-world observations of different contract offers, we conduct a lab experiment to examine a principal's contract choice and agent effort in both long- and short-term employment relationships, implemented as one-shot and repeated games. We find that a piece-rate contract has the strongest incentive effect on short-term agents’ effort and is the principals’ dominant choice. Nevertheless, the bonus contract works almost as well as the piece-rate contract for long-term relationships, but not so well for short-term relationships. In addition, the bonus contract's effect on effort is mainly driven by the bonus component, suggesting that a fixed wage alone is not an effective mechanism to improve workers’ performance.
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