The Employment Relationship

Henry Ford's Decision:

In 1914, Henry Ford both decreased the hours worked per day and simultaneously nearly doubled the hourly wage paid to his employees. At the time, nobody understood his reasoning. The Walrasian model held that employees' wages were uniquely determined by the labor supply. Thus, Ford was expected to pay his employees a wage equal to their next best alternative.

Yet, the year following Ford's change, employment grew but both the number of employees that quit dropped nearly 90% and the number of employees that were fired fell nearly 99% from the previous year.

The Walrasian model cannot explain this phenomena. It seems there must be other factors at play...

A company's production function is defined by the equation:

y=y(he)+ε

• Assumptions:
  1. y' > 0
  2. y'' < 0
  3. h = # of hours worked (assuming 1 hour per worker)
  4. e ∈ [0,1] (Simply, e is the "effort" term and is equal to the amount per hour that a worker actually works)
  5. ε is an error term with μ=0

• Note that e, the effort exerted by the worker, is a function of the wage (w), the level of monitoring (m), and an exogenously determined
  "next best alternative" we'll call z. Thus, e(w,m;z).

The Game:

The Employer Starts:

• The employer seeks to maximize profit knowing that for a given wage rate (w), the employee will exert effort e.
• At the beginning of the game the employer selects:

1. The wage (w) to be payed to the employee
2. The level of monitoring (m)
3. A termination probability defined by t ∈ [0,1] with t_e < 0 and t_m >0
   • The termination probability is simply the probability that, at the end of a given period, the worker will be fired for inadequate work. This probability is thus obviously a function of both the worker's effort and the employer's level of monitoring.

The Worker Responds:

• The worker seeks to maximize his utility given the wage rate.

1. The worker's per period utility is a function of both wage and effort.
   • u=u(w,e) with u_w ≥ 0 and u_e ≤ 0
   1. • u_e ≤ 0 does not imply that the worker prefers to not work at all. Rather, it simply implies that the derivative of utility with respect to effort is not positive because this would mean that the employee would always choose to work more in order to maximize his utility.

• The worker decides upon an e in order to maximize the present value of his utility package (v) according to a discount rate (i):

1. • v=(u(w,e)+(1+t(e))v+t(e)z)/(1+i)

Note that if the employee is fired the game ends and the employee receives z

From this we can easily rearrange terms to get this:

Home