Shirking

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Shirking

The tendency to do less work when the return is smaller. Owners may have more incentive to shirk if they issue equity as opposed to debt, because they retain less ownership interest in the company and therefore may receive a smaller return. Thus, shirking is considered an agency cost of equity.

Shirking

The act of working less when there is no chance of earning a higher return. For example, a company may have punitive taxes levied on it if its profits are considered excessive. The owners of the company therefore have an incentive to shirk their responsibilities and to not work as hard as they otherwise would. Likewise, employees who are paid poorly may shirk their responsibilities since there is no incentive rewarding hard work.

shirking

see TEAM PRODUCTION.

Collins Dictionary of Economics, 4th ed. © C. Pass, B. Lowes, L. Davies 2005

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References in periodicals archive ?

Time will tell if the candy becomes popular, May said, but the Shirks "are on the right track by offering something different."

The Shirks seems to understand the importance of getting the word out by offering free samples and other promotional ideas, May said.

Volcano hopes Lava sales heat up

As long-term contracts became the norm, a growing proportion of baseball's talent pool had, at least during some years, an incentive to shirk. This incentive was absent only for those players

The emergence of multiyear contracts, however, has made it relatively easier for players to shirk. Shirking has taken the form of on-field, clubhouse, and off-field antics that are disappointing and, at times, embarrassing.

A Topology of Baseball Player Behavior. (Triple Play)

A worker with type [lambda] will choose not to shirk (e = 1) only if the following inequality holds:

Tournaments as a worker discipline device

Note that a worker caught shirking receives a zero wage.(7) The probability that a worker will not shirk is denoted by q.

The trade-off between supervision and wages: evidence of efficiency wages from the NLSY

In this way, the worker is encouraged not to shirk and an efficiency-wage trade-off arises.

Commentary

Households may shirk in their responsibility to the landlord by devoting some fraction f [less than or equal to] 1 of their outside labor endowment to homestead activity.

Wage-homestead tenancies: technological dualism and tenant household size

4 The most general one-period utility specification of shirking would allow for a utility function of [u.sup.s]([c.sub.u], [c.sub.r]) if the worker shirks and [u.sup.w]([c.sub.u], [c.sub.r]) if the worker does not shirk, where [c.sub.u] and [c.sub.r] are the worker's consumption of the urban and rural goods, respectively.

Rural-urban wage differentials, unemployment, and efficiency wages: an open economy policy analysis

In each period a worker chooses whether to exert a fixed positive level of effort, e = [e.sup.*] [greater than] 0, or to shirk and exert no effort, e = 0.

Worker effort decisions and efficient gender-specific wage-tenure profiles

On one hand, they claim that the workers would be "happy to work at [w.sup.*] or lower." On the other, they assert that at such wages "they cannot make a credible promise not to shirk." One would like to ask the authors the question: "At [w.sup.*], would the employees work or shirk?" It appears as if Shapiro and Stiglitz used a terminological trick on the reader to make their case.

Efficiency wages and involuntary unemployment revisited

Moreover, if shirking and selection are both important, firms will pursue methods in addition to high wages to try to attract workers who are inherently more productive and inherently less likely to shirk or quit.