Reputation Concerns Under At-Will Employment

Abstract

We study a continuous-time model of long-run employment relationship with fixed wage and at-will firing; that is, termination of the relationship is non-contractible. Depending on his type, the worker either always works hard, or can freely choose his effort level. The firm does not know the worker’s type and the monitoring is imperfect. We show that, in the unique Markov equilibrium, as the worker’s reputation worsens, his job becomes less secure and the strategic worker works harder. We further demonstrate that the relationship between average productivity and job insecurity is U shaped, which is consistent with typical findings in the organizational psychology literature.

Keywords: moral hazard, job insecurity, reputation, at-will employment

JEL Classification: C73, D83, J24, M51