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Journal ArticleDOI

Bonus Payments, on-the-Job Training, and Lifetime Employment in Japan

Masanori Hashimoto
- 01 Oct 1979 - 
- Vol. 87, Iss: 5, pp 1086-1104
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TLDR
In this paper, a model of on-the-job training is developed to analyze the determination of the amounts and the sharing of investment in specific human capital, and the model predicts that increased profitability of investment leads to an increased bonus-earnings ratio.
Abstract
The prevalence in Japan of flexible wages in the form of bonus payments is explained by a high profitability of investment in specific human capital together with the low costs of transactions facing the employer and the worker in assessing fluctuations in productivities. A model of on-the-job training is developed to analyze the determination of the amounts and the sharing of investment in specific human capital. The model predicts that increased profitability of investment leads to an increased bonus-earnings ratio. Evidence indicates that education and firm size, which are often said to be positively associated with the profitability of on-the-job training in Japan, as well as years of experience in the current firm, have significant positive associations with the bonus-earnings ratio. An observed positive association between the cyclical sensitivities in a production index and in the bonus-earnings ratio also supports the theory.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training

TL;DR: In the human capital model with perfect labor markets, firms never invest in general skills and all cost of general training are borne by workers as mentioned in this paper. But when lobor market frictions compress the structure of the labor market, the costs of general skills are increased.
Posted Content

Firm-Specific Human Capital as a Shared Investment

TL;DR: In this paper, a formal statement of the sharing model is presented, and a systematic analysis of the incentive to share the investment in firm-specific human capital is performed, revealing that whether or not the investment is shared depends on the existence in the post-investment years of costs of evaluating and agreeing on the worker's productivities in the firm and elsewhere.
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Two-Sided Uncertainty and "Up-or-Out" Contracts

TL;DR: In this article, a bilateral moral hazard problem was proposed for "up-or-out" employment contracts, where the employer sets a wage higher than opportunity cost to induce the worker to invest in firm-specific capital.
Journal ArticleDOI

Contingent Pay and Managerial Performance

TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship between financial incentives and performance and found that bonuses for managers who are incentivized to be more successful were higher than those who were not incentivised to be successful.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process

TL;DR: In this paper, the potential of post-contractural apportunistic behavior for improving market efficiency through intra-firm rather than interfirm transactions is examined under the assumption that vertical costs will increase less than contracting costs as specialized assets and appropriable quasi rents increase.
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A Theory of Marriage: Part II

TL;DR: In this article, the skeleton of a theory of marriage is presented, which assumes that each person tries to do as well as possible and that the "marriage market" is in equilibrium.
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Implicit Contracts and Underemployment Equilibria

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study an industry with demand uncertainty which prompts risk-neutral firms to act both as employers and as insurers of homogeneous, risk-averse laborers, and find that firms are more likely to specify full employment the more of the following conditions prevail.
Journal ArticleDOI

Wages and Employment under Uncertain Demand

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine some implications of two postulates for firms' wage and employment policies, namely that firms or stockholders have easier access to capital markets at lower costs or higher returns than do small investors, such as workers, and that there are important mobility and turnover costs incurred when a worker moves from one firm to another.