Economists have long been intrigued by an influential literature in psychology positing that monetary pay lowers performance on enjoyable tasks by crowding out agents' intrinsic interest in them. But typical experiments in this literature do not report a full set of performance metrics, which might reveal conflicting evidence on crowding out. Further, they may suffer from confounds. To evaluate these issues, we review over 100 prior tests and run a field experiment building on the canonical two-session test for crowding out wherein agents receive pay for an interesting activity in session one that is withdrawn unexpectedly in session two. We test whether pay harms performance using a comprehensive set of performance measures, and if so, whether unmet pay expectations might also contribute to this decline. Our results on output, productivity and quits are most consistent with a standard economics model than with a crowding out one. Additional, though more speculative, evidence suggests that unmet pay expectations may harm output quality.

中文翻译：

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货币激励是否会破坏本质上令人愉快的任务的表现？现场测试

长期以来，经济学家一直对心理学中有影响力的文献很感兴趣，该文献认为货币薪酬会排挤代理人对他们的内在兴趣，从而降低他们在令人愉快的任务上的表现。但该文献中的典型实验并未报告完整的性能指标，这可能会揭示关于挤出的相互矛盾的证据。此外，它们可能会受到混淆。为了评估这些问题，我们回顾了 100 多个先前的测试，并在规范的两阶段测试的基础上进行了一项现场实验，以进行挤出，其中代理在第一阶段中获得有趣活动的报酬，而在第二阶段中意外退出。我们使用一套全面的绩效指标来测试薪酬是否会损害绩效，如果是，未满足的薪酬预期是否也可能导致这种下降。我们的输出结果，生产力和退出与标准经济学模型最一致，而不是挤出模型。此外，尽管更具推测性，证据表明未满足的薪酬预期可能会损害产出质量。