Gift exchange and the separation of ownership and control

Abstract

Numerous gift-exchange experiments have found a positive wage-effort relationship. In (almost) all these experiments the employer both owns and controls the firm. This paper explores to what extent the separation of ownership and control affects the wage-effort relationship. We compare the standard bilateral gift-exchange game between an owner-manager and a worker with two trilateral ones where the firm is owned by a shareholder and controlled by a manager. The wage-effort relationship is similar in all three situations. Most strikingly, workers reward higher wages with higher effort, even when the manager does not share in the firm's profits. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.