Is Workers' Effort Sensitive to Contract Type and Firm Ownership? The Spanish Case

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to know whether labour effort of Spanish workers is sensitive to contract type and firm ownership (public or private). So, a labour effort function is estimated to explain this variable by the wage level and a group of factors representing worker, job and firm features. The database used is the ‘Quality of Work Life Survey’ 1999-2004. The outcomes show that labour effort depends positively on the predicted wage. Besides, labour effort is greater in the private sector than in the public one. In this sense, it has been observed that being a civil servant has a negative effect on the intensity of labour effort. Finally, those variables representing the climate of industrial relations are found to be quite relevant. https://doi.org/10.21114/rel.2012.01.01