Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Self-control problems change the logic of agency theory by partly aligning the interests of the firm and worker: both now value contracts that elicit future effort. Findings from a year-long field experiment with full-time data entry workers support this idea. First, workers increase output by voluntarily choosing dominated contracts (which penalize low output but give no additional rewards for high output). Second, effort increases closer to (randomly assigned) paydays. Third, the contract and payday effects are strongly correlated within workers, and this correlation grows with experience. We suggest that workplace features such as high-powered incentives or effort monitoring may provide self-control benefits.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/683822 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question How do commitment contracts affect productivity in Indian workplaces? Sample Trial population and sample selection Employees at an Indian data entry firm. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description The intervention tested whether self control problems exist in the workplace by imposing a salary penalty if employees failed to hit an output target they set themselves. Employees were randomised to treatment groups in which they set their own targets on the morning of or the evening before work, the targets were set by the employer, or there was no target set at all. It also examined whether or not working on a payday effected output. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Self-control problems change the logic of agency theory by partly aligning the interests of the firm and worker: both now value contracts that elicit future effort. Researchers, in partnership with an Indian data entry firm, conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether self-control problems existed in the workplace and whether workers demanded employer- or self-imposed production targets to mitigate these problems.</p> Results <p>Workers with commitment contracts with self chosen targets had higher attendance at work and greater production output. Output was also found to be greater on days that workers were receiving their pay.</p> Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Kaur, S., Kremer, M., Mullainathan, S. (2015). 'Self-Control at Work'. Journal of Political Economy. Citation for use in academic references
