Piece rates and workplace injury: Does survey evidence support Adam Smith?

摘要: While piece rates are routinely associated with higher productivity and wages, they can also generate unanticipated effects. Using cross-country European data, we provide among the first general survey evidence of a strong link between workplace injury. Despite controls for hazards, job characteristics worker effort, workers suffer 5 percentage point greater likelihood This remains despite attempts to control endogeneity heterogeneity. As rate wage premium estimates rarely injury likelihood, this raises specter that part reflects compensating differential risk