Employee Crime and the Monitoring Puzzle
| Title: | Employee Crime and the Monitoring Puzzle |
| Author: |
Dickens, William T.; Katz, Lawrence F.; Lang, Kevin; Summers, Lawrence H.
Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors. |
| Citation: | Dickens, William T., Lawrence F. Katz, Kevin Lang, and Lawrence H. Summers. 1989. Employee crime and the monitoring puzzle. Journal of Labor Economics 7(3): 331-347. |
| Full Text & Related Files: |
Summers_EmployeeCrime.pdf (284.1Kb; PDF) 
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| Abstract: | The simplest economic theories of crime predict that profit-maximizing firms should follow strategies of minimal monitoring with large penalties for employee crime. We investigate possible reasons why firms actually spend considerable resources trying to detect employee malfeasance. We find that the most plausible explanations for firms' large outlays on monitoring of employees-legal restrictions on penalty clauses in contracts and the adverse impact of harsh punishment schemes on worker morale-are also consistent with the payment of premium (rent-generating) wages by cost-minimizing firms. |
| Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/298211 |
| Terms of Use: | This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAA |
| Citable link to this page: | http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3645199 |
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FAS Scholarly Articles [5128]
Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University
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