Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/33151 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 2012
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of data, there has so far been hardly any empirical evidence about the second. Making use of a unique representative data set, we find clear evidence that risk aversion has a highly significant and substantial negative impact on the probability that an employee's pay is performance contingent.
Subjects: 
risk
incentives
agency theory
risk aversion
performance appraisal
pay for performance
GSOEP
JEL: 
J33
M52
D80
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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