This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make a firm in a competitive labor market face an upward-sloping supply curve of labor, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the hold-up problem in firm-specific investment, can make it profitable for an employer to give workers autonomy in effort or task choice, and can propagate shocks to unemployment.

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doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2007.10.006, hdl.handle.net/1765/76611
Journal of Economic Psychology
Erasmus School of Economics

Dur, R., & Glazer, A. (2008). The desire for impact. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(3), 285–300. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2007.10.006