Self-Enforcing Wage Contracts

S-Tier
Journal: Review of Economic Studies
Year: 1988
Volume: 55
Issue: 4
Pages: 541-554

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We examine long-term wage contracts between a risk-neutral firm and a risk-averse worker when both can costlessly renege and buy or sell labour at a random spot market wage. A self-enforcing contract is one in which neither party ever has an incentive to renege. In the optimum self-enforcing contract, wages are sticky: they are less variable than spot market wages and positively serially correlated. They are updated by a simple rule: around each spot wage is a time invariant interval, and the contract wage changes each period by the smallest amount necessary to bring it into the current interval.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:oup:restud:v:55:y:1988:i:4:p:541-554.
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-29