Three essays on incentives and motivation among workers

This dissertation contains three essays analyzing the impact of incentives and intrinsic characteristics when workers face different types of agreements and applies Bayesian finite mixture estimations to experimental data. The first chapter utilizes experimental data from a three-person trust game to estimate a finite mixture model identifying "types" of behavior. The data are from an experiment designed to capture key aspects of a caregiving setting, and consists of a repeated three-person game where a "care provider" who is responsible for the care of a "target" can provide care directly at a high cost or employ a care worker who can provide care at a lower cost. The provider can transfer resources to the care worker, who then decides how much to transfer to the target. Using a Bayesian finite mixture model, two types of behavior are identified among providers, and a single dominant type among the care workers. The essay offers a first look into different approaches to trust decisions using Bayesian estimation to avoid traditional convergence failures in the estimation of finite mixture models.;The second chapter introduces an experiment using a principal-agent framework with a strategy method. This study tests theories incorporating intrinsic motivation in principal-agent environments by using lab experiments assuming that participants with different social preferences have different reactions to variations in the contractual parameters. The analysis focuses on three types of motives: norm-based, reciprocal and opportunistic agents, in addition to the impact of mission alignment with worker's motivation on the choice of effort. The experiment presents subjects with 3 sets of ten contract offers that systematically vary to account for social preference types. Comparing the decisions to the theoretical optimal response of effort at each contract set we found a classification for the subjects consistent with behavior of opportunistic, norm based and mission motivated agents.;The third essay extends the analysis of the principal agent experiments and estimates a finite mixture model to analyze the prevalence agents with social preferences in the two types of organizations. The estimation finds two subgroups of behavior consistent with opportunistic behavior and norm-based behavior.