20世纪80年代以来微观工资决策研究的回顾——基
于五种经济学顶尖期刊的分析结论
摘 要
在经济学研究中，关于工资问题的研究具有悠久的历史，并且成为经济学研究的重要组成部分，其研究主题经历了一个发展变化的过程。自20世纪80年代以来，新的研究趋势是更加注重对企业内部微观的工资决策进行分析。
对微观工资决策的研究不仅拓宽了经济学的研究领域，而且为薪酬管理实践提供了重要的理论基础，这一研究领域蓬勃发展起来。在我国逐步开始关注这一领域的背景下，有必要回顾国外微观工资决策研究的进展，系统地总结、分析研究现状，把握这一研究领域的趋势与走向，既为国内学者进一步开展相关研究提供支持，也对认识和解决薪酬管理实践中的一些重要问题具有借鉴意义。
因此，本文基于80年代以来五种国际顶尖经济学期刊所发表的关于微观工资决策的论文，对微观工资决策研究进行回顾，主要考察以下问题：第一，探讨工资概念在经济学研究中的应用状况；第二，提炼工资决策研究主要的研究主题，总结研究内容和结论，归纳研究方法；第三，预测微观工资决策研究未来可能的发展趋势与研究方向。
本文的研究方法是文献法，文献来源是根据SSCI影响因子排序确定的五种国际上最具影响力的经济学期刊，分别是《经济文献杂志》（“Journal of Economic Literature”）、《经济学季刊》（“Quarterly Journal of Economics”）、《美国经济评论》（“American Economic Review”）、《政治经济学杂志》（“Journal of Political Economy”）和《劳动经济学杂志》（“Journal of Labor Economics”）。所选择的文献是20世纪80年代以来上述五种期刊发表的研究微观工资决策的论文，共计42篇。
本文分别考察了所选论文的发表时间、所用工资概念、研究方法、研究主题等，并据此对论文进行分类整理和总结归纳。研究发现，首先，在经济学研
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究中，关于企业内部工资决策问题的论文数量呈现出逐渐增多的趋势。表明该领域所获关注程度不断提高，逐步成为一个蓬勃发展的研究领域。
其次，微观工资决策研究所应用的工资概念经历了由主要应用“wage”，演化为“wage”与“salary”的区分，进一步开始应用“Pay”、“Rewards”和“Compensation”的演变过程。而在各时间段，应用频率最高的工资概念始终是“incentive”。
在研究方法方面，微观工资决策研究比较偏重理论分析，尽管实证分析受到更多的重视，但由于获取数据难度大，与劳动经济学其他领域的研究相比，微观工资决策研究的实证分析相对滞后，有待强化。但实证分析的数据来源广泛，包括企业人事记录、管理调查、实验数据、人口普查、家计调查等多种来源。；；
从研究主题来看，工资、监督、努力和产出是微观工资决策研究的关键变量，关于四个关键变量相互关系的研究是工资决策研究的核心内容，构成了研究体系的基本框架。通过考虑绩效衡量指标的选择、环境的风险、企业的组织结构等因素对关键变量相互关系的影响，使工资决策研究体系得到丰富和完善。
本文进一步深入地考察了各研究主题的研究内容，并分别对各研究主题的内容进行了提炼和总结，主要的研究结论如下：
(1)工资与努力：根据效率工资理论，工资水平的提高将导致员工努力程度的提高，尽管有观点认为工资水平增长同时带来收入效应，抵消积极的作用，但实证检验结果表明提高工资水平能够提高工人的努力程度。同时，竞赛理论指出加大层级间工资差距能够提高工人的努力水平，运用体育比赛数据和企业实际数据所做的实证检验均支持该观点。
（2）工资与产出：建立工资与产出的联系是解决委托代理问题的有效方法，而且基于产出的工资制度能够通过激励效应和分类效应的双重作用提高产出水平。但实证研究表明，高管人员的报酬与企业绩效间的正向相关关系的相关度很小。企业规模增大,企业总资产变化加剧，公共和私人政治力量的影响降低了高管人员报酬和企业绩效间的敏感程度。
（3）工资与监督：二者关系存在争论，效率工资理论的偷懒模型和委托代理理论均认为二者是负向相关关系，但前者假定工人只能在努力和偷懒二者间选择，而且将期望的努力水平作为外生变量，如果取消上述条件限制，监督与
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工资的关系是模糊的。而委托代理理论关于二者关系的结论是在静态条件下得出的，如果考虑动态因素，监督程度与工资激励呈正向相关的关系。
（4）绩效衡量指标的选择：非财务指标和主观指标受到更多的关注，其重要性为理论分析所证明。选择绩效衡量指标的基本原则是选择信息含量大、具有可控性的指标，并随着环境的变化进行调整。
（5）环境风险：在环境风险加大的情况下，将工资激励计划强加给风险厌恶的工人将提高工资成本，因此应减少工资激励计划的使用。但相反观点认为风险加大使直接监督的可行性更差，需要加强使用激励计划。
（6）企业的组织结构：在科层制组织中，入职的初始层级的工资水平较高，但始终不能获得提升，长期处于初始层级的员工的工资增长率低于通货膨胀率，实际工资水平下降。在考虑能力因素和激励因素的情况下确定层级间的工资差距。
本文在回顾微观工资决策研究的基础上，对该领域未来可能的发展趋势进行了尝试性的预测，主要观点有：第一，实证分析在微观工资决策研究中将得到更加广泛的应用；第二，工资决策研究在实证分析中将更加广泛地应用面板数据；第三，相关研究将考虑工人在能力上的异质性对工资决策产生的影响；第四，微观工资决策研究在我国经济学界，尤其是劳动经济学界将获得更大的关注。
另外，本文的文献仅来源于五种期刊，难免遗漏该领域有价值的文献。而且，由于没有对管理学期刊中的工资决策研究进行回顾，导致没有深入对比二者的特点，上述研究局限有待将来的研究进行改善。
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Abstract
In economics, the research on wage problems dated from the first half of the 19th century. It has become an important part of economic research. The subjects of studies on wage problems have changed in these years. From 1980s, the new tendency is to emphasize on firm-level wage decisions.
The researches on firm-level wage decisions not only widen economic field but also support compensation management practice. Therefore, this research field has been developed and attracts much attention gradually in China. In this background, there is a need to review the evolution of this field, to summarize the conclusions of studies and to forecast tendencies of this field in future. The review will provide much support for Chinese researchers to develop this field and for experts to solve some important compensation management problems in practice.
Therefore, this article will review the researches on firm-level wage decisions based on articles in this field published in top five journals from 1980s till now. The questions that will be answered in this article are as follows: firstly, how do they use the some conceptions, such as wage, salary, pay, incentive, rewards and compensation in economic research? Secondly, what subjects are focuses of the research field? What important conclusions are drawn from the researches? What approaches are used in these researches? Thirdly, what are possible tendencies of this field in future?
The research approach of this article is literature. The literatures come from top five economic journals, which are Journal of Economic Literature, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Journal of Labor Economics. The literatures are the articles about firm-level wage decisions published in these five journals from 1980s till now. There are forty-two articles in all.
The literatures are sorted by publish date, research approach, research subject
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and so on, and then the research contents are summarized and concluded. There are some findings from the review. Firstly, in economics, the number of articles about firm-level wage decisions is increasing in these years, which suggests that this research field attracts much more attention and is developed greatly.
Secondly, there is an evolution of the conceptions about wage used in articles about firm-level wage decisions. At first, “wage” was used widely, and then “wage” and “salary” are distinguished. Recently, “Pay”“,Rewards” and “Compensation” are used in researches. However, in each phase, “incentive” has the highest frequency.
Thirdly, the researches on firm-level wage decisions pay much emphasis on theoretical analysis. Although empirical analysis is used in researches more frequently, the ratio of empirical analysis is still relative low. However, the data used in empirical analysis come from different sources, such as personnel records, management survey, experiment, population census and household survey.
Another finding is that wage, monitoring, effort and output are four key variables in researches on firm-level wage decisions. The core contents of research on firm-level wage decisions are discussing on relations among these four key variables. And considering about some factors such as performance measurement, environment risk and organization structure makes the research system improved.
This article summarizes the contents of each subject and the main conclusions are as follows.
(1)Wage and Effort：According to efficiency wage theory, the increase of wage level will induce more effort supplied by workers. Some researchers think that the increase of wage level will induce income effect meanwhile so that the effort supplied by workers will reduce, but the empirical analysis testify that the increase of wage level will induce more effort. Tournament theory indicates that widening the gap between two levels will induce more effort supplied by workers and empirical analyses support this view.
(2) Wage and Output：One of the efficient methods to solve the principal-agent problem is to tie wage level to output level. And the wage based on output has
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