Do Pensions Enhance Worker Effort and Selection? Evidence from Public Schools
By Michael Bates & Andrew C. Johnston
Why do employers offer pensions? We empirically examine two theoretical rationales, namely that pensions improve worker effort and worker selection. We test these hypotheses using rich administrative measures on effort and output for teachers around the pension-eligibility notch. When workers cross the notch, their effective compensation falls by roughly 50 percent of salary, but we observe no reduction in worker effort or output. This implies that pension payments do not increase effort. As for selection, we find that pensions retain low-value-added and high-value-added workers at the same rate, implying similar preferences across teacher quality and no influence on selection.
Source SSRN
