What is an Award Worth? An Econometric Assessment of the Impact of Awards on Employee Performance
CESifo, Munich, 2009
CESifo Working Paper No. 2657
![](https://cesifo.org/DocImg/cesifo1_wp2657.jpg?c=1689236937)
Behavioral economics documents the importance of status and self-image concerns in the workplace, but is largely silent about how to instrumentalize them to induce effort. Awards - widespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere - are motivators that derive their value from such social concerns. Panel data from the call center of a large international bank allow us to estimate the impact of receiving an award on effort. The performance of winners proves to be significantly higher than that of comparable non-recipients after the award has been presented. This increase in work effort is sizeable, robust, and not driven by reverse causation.
Labour Markets