Purpose – Under a discontinuous and nonlinear compensation scheme, which is prevalent among car dealerships, the amount of a salesperson’s expected daily commission depends primarily on his position in the pay schedule on the day he makes a sale. Salespeople thus vary their efforts and adopt a different pricing strategy week by week, or even day by day. The purpose of this paper is to examine the incentive effect of such a nonlinear scheme and provide the evidence that salespeople’s behavior is consistent with the theory. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct regression analyses using the transaction data provided by two North American auto dealerships. The authors construct a daily measure of varying incentive intensity and evaluate its impact on the distribution of individual daily sales and the dealership’s gross profit rate. Findings – The authors find that the daily measure of varying incentive intensity has a positive effect on the distribution of individual daily sales and a negative impact on the dealership’s gross profit rate. The results suggest that: salespeople adjust their effort levels in response to the intensity of incentives
and they game the system by lowering the prices when the marginal return to doing so is high. Research limitations/implications – The study shows that there is a high cost associated with the discontinuous nonlinear pay scheme, raising the question of why many auto dealerships use it. Originality/value – This paper sheds light on the undesirable aspects of discontinuous and nonlinear incentive schemes, varied performance and gaming, by quantifying the effects of the worker’s behavior.

In this article, we empirically analyze the effect of team characteristics on a team's choice of group contract type (its governance structure) and examine the combined impact of team characteristics and the group contract choice on group and individual performance in a classroom setting. We utilize endogenous dummy variable models in both group-level and individual-level analyses due to the expected endogeneity of the contract choice. The estimation results confirm a statistically significant positive effect of a governance structure, democratic contract that includes a mechanism to punish free-riders on both group and individual performance. We also estimate switching regression models to account for the possible heterogeneous treatment effects but do not find any significant difference between the treated and the nontreated in the effect of the democratic contract option implying that the contract choice is not necessarily motivated by its performance-enhancing effect.

健康経営施策の効果検証を行うプロジェクトである。化学メーカー1社の協力を得て、慶應義塾大学の中室牧子先生と共同で実施した禁煙支援プログラムのフィールド実験は、2019年度12～３月に第1回目の介入実験を行ったが、参加者が50名弱と予定よりも大幅に少なかったため、第2回目を2020年度に行うこととした。第一期のみのデータでは、禁煙は、たばこ休憩時間削減とプレゼンティズム改善により労働時間を減少させ、健康問題を理由とする欠勤日数も有意に減少させた。研究支援体制作りのため、公益財団法人 日本生産性本部、（株）イーウェル社、同志社大学奥平寛子准教授と共に、「健康と生産性」研究会を立ち上げ、参加企業の募集を開始した。

フランクフルト大学のGuido Friebel教授を1月に招聘し、人事経済学に関するセミナーを早稲田大学と東大で行った他、ドイツのアウグスブルグで開かれた人事経済学のコンファレンスに参加し、欧州の研究者との連携を図った。昨年度の主な研究成果としては以下のものがある。4月までの（経済産業研究所）ディスカッションペーパー発行予定・Muroga, Kiho and Hideo Owan, “How Informative Is Three Hundred Sixty Degree Evaluation?”・Nakamuro, Owan and Sato, ”The Effect of Firm-Sponsored Interpersonal Skills Training on Worker’s Performance”・Shangguan, Ruo and Hideo Owan, "How Good Managers Steer Their Projects: Using Value-Added Measures of Manager Quality" 投稿中・Sato, Kaori, Yuki Hashimoto and Hideo Owan “Gender Differences in Career,” accepted conditional on minor revision by Journal of the Japanese and International Economies  ・Sato, Kaori, Sachiko Kuroda, and Hideo Owan, “Mental Health Effects of Long Work Hours, Night and Weekend Work, and Quick Return”, submitted to Social Science and Medicine 国際会議での発表  ・Hideo Owan, "How Good Managers Steer Their Projects: Using Value-Added Measures of Manager Quality", The 12th Annual Organizational Economics Workshop, Australian National University (Australia), November 29, 2018.    ・Hideo Owan, "How Good Managers Steer Their Projects: Using Value-Added Measures of Manager Quality", The 22nd Colloquium on Personnel Economics, University of Augsburg (Germany), March 14, 2019.