Marco Fongoni

Chercheur ,  Aix-Marseille Université , Faculté d'économie et de gestion (FEG)

Macroéconomie, économie du travail et économie internationale
Fongoni
Statut
Maître de conférences
Domaine(s) de recherche
Économie comportementale et expérimentale, Macroéconomie
Thèse
2017, University of Strathclyde
Téléchargement
CV
Contact
marco.fongoni[at]univ-amu.fr
Adresse

AMU - AMSE
5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498
​13205 Marseille Cedex 1

Site
https://sites.google.com/site/marcofongoni/
Résumé We investigate how the incompleteness of an employment contract—discretionary and noncontractible effort—can affect an employer’s decision about cutting nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee payroll data from Great Britain linked to a survey of managers, we find support for the main predictions of a stylized theoretical framework of wage determination: nominal cuts are at most half as likely when managers believe that their employees have significant discretion over how they do their work, although the involvement of employees, via information sharing, reduces this correlation. We also describe how contract incompleteness and wage cuts vary across different jobs. These findings provide the first observational quantitative evidence that managerial beliefs about contractual incompleteness can account for their hesitancy over nominal wage cuts. This has long been conjectured by economists based on anecdotes, qualitative surveys, and laboratory and field experiments.
Mots clés Wave rigidity, Employment contract, Workplace relations, Employer-employee data, Pay change
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This paper develops a theoretical framework to think about employees' effort choices, and applies this framework to assess the ability of existing experimental designs to identify the effect of pay inequality on worker effort. The analysis shows that failure to control for a number of confounds—such as reciprocity towards the employer in multi-lateral gift-exchange games (vertical fairness), or the incentive to increase effort when feeling underpaid under piece rates (income targeting)—may lead to inaccurate interpretation of evidence of treatment effects. In light of these findings, the paper provides a set of recommendations on how to improve identification in the design of controlled experiments in the future.
Mots clés Pay inequality, Effort, Laboratory experiments, Fairness, Reference dependence
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This paper develops a search and matching framework in which workers are characterised by asymmetric reference-dependent reciprocity, and firms set wages by considering the effect that these can have on workers' effort, and therefore on output. The cyclical response of effort to wage changes can considerably amplify shocks, independently of the cyclicality of the hiring wage, which becomes irrelevant for unemployment volatility; and firms' expectations of downward wage rigidity in existing jobs increases the volatility of job creation. The model is consistent with evidence on hiring and incumbents' wage cyclicality, and provides novel predictions on the dynamics of effort.
Mots clés Reciprocity, Wage cyclicality, Downward wage rigidity, Job creation, Unemployment volatility
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Résumé In 2020, Berlin introduced a rigorous rent-control policy responding to soaring prices by capping rents: the Mietendeckel (rent freeze). The German Constitutional Court revoked the policy only one year later. Although successful in lowering rents during its duration, the consequences for Berlin’s rental market and close-by markets are per se not clear. This article evaluates the short-term causal supply-side effects in terms of prices, quantities, and landlords’ strategic behavior. We develop a theoretical framework capturing the key features of first-generation rent control policies and Berlin-specific aspects. Using a rich pool of detailed rent advertisements, predictions are tested, and further empirical causal inference techniques are applied for comparing price trajectories of dwellings inside and outside the policy’s scope. Mechanically, advertised rents drop significantly upon the policy’s enactment. A substantial rent gap along Berlin’s administrative border emerges, and rapidly growing rents in Berlin’s (unregulated) adjacent municipalities are observed. Landlords started adopting a hedging strategy insuring themselves against the risk of contractually long-term fixed low rents following a potentially unconstitutional law. Whereas this hedge was beneficial for landlords, the risk was completely borne by tenants. Moreover, the number of available properties for rent dropped significantly, a share of which appears to be permanently lost for the rental sector. This hampers a successful housing search for first-time renters and people moving within the city. Overall, negative consequences for renters appear to outweigh positive ones.
Mots clés Legal uncertainty, Supply disruptions, Urban policy, Rent freeze, First-generation rent control
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Résumé This paper advances a theory of unemployment hysteresis—transitory shocks leave permanent effects—based on a model of endogenous path-dependent wage rigidity under incomplete employment contracts. Workers’ relative wage comparisons—incumbents’ aversion to wage cuts and new hires’ concern with pay inequality—imply wage increases are partially irreversible, generating path dependence and asymmetry in wage adjustments. During recessions, hiring wages fail to adjust fully downward, depressing job creation and producing hysteresis effects and large unemployment fluctuations. A quantitative assessment shows that these effects can be significant under plausible calibrations of the cost of wage cuts and the sensitivity of workers to relative wages. A 1% transitory shock can generate a permanent increase in unemployment of about 0.5% to 15%, with benchmark values around 1.5–5.5%. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the theory for the effectiveness of monetary policy and the empirical research on hysteresis effects, suggesting promising directions for future research.
Mots clés Incomplete contracts, Wage rigidity, Irreversibility, Hysteresis, Unemployment
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Résumé We develop a model of incomplete employment contracts such that employees have some discretion over effort, which depends on their work morale. Nominal wage cuts have a strong negative effect on morale, while employee involvement in workplace decision-making tends to increase morale. We derive predictions on how these two mechanisms affect the decisions of firms to cut nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee and manager survey data from Great Britain, we find support for our model: nominal wage cuts are only half as likely when managers think that employees have some discretion over how they perform their work, but this reduced likelihood recovers partially when employees are involved in the decision-making process at their workplace.
Mots clés Wage rigidity, Reciprocity, Workplace relations, Employer-employee data
Télécharger HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This paper develops a theoretical framework to think about employees' effort choices, and applies this framework to assess the ability of existing laboratory designs to identify the effect of pay inequality on worker effort. The analysis shows that failure to control for a number of confounds-such as reciprocity towards the employer in multilateral gift-exchange games (vertical fairness), or the incentive to increase effort when feeling underpaid under piece rates (income targeting)-may lead to inaccurate interpretation of evidence of treatment effects. In light of these findings, the paper provides a set of recommendations on how to improve identification in the design of laboratory experiments in the future.
Mots clés Pay inequality, Effort, Laboratory experiments, Reference dependence, Fairness
Télécharger HAL Google Scholar