Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction

摘要

In this paper we manipulate access to information on coworker pay to test how knowledge of one's position in the pay distribution of immediate coworkers affects satisfaction and job search intentions. We find that the information treatment has a negative effect on workers paid below the median for their unit and occupation-particularly for those in the lowest pay quartile-but has no effect on workers paid above median. The evidence further suggests that the effect of the treatment is more closely related to pay rank than to the actual level of pay relative to the median in the pay unit.