Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy
No 2026:3: Worker reciprocity and the returns to training: evidence from a field experiment
Jan Sauermann ()
Additional contact information
Jan Sauermann: Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Copenhagen Business School; Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); ROA, Maastricht University; UCLS, Uppsala University.
Abstract: Do reciprocal workers have higher returns to employer-sponsored training? Using a field experiment with random assignment to training combined with survey information on workers’ reciprocal inclinations, the results show that reciprocal workers reciprocate employers’ training investments by higher post-training performance. This result, which is robust to controlling for observed personality traits and worker fixed effects, suggests that individuals reciprocate the firm’s human capital investment with higher effort, in line with theoretical models on gift exchange in the workplace. This finding provides an alternative rationale to explain firm training investments even with risk of poaching.
Keywords: on-the-job training; reciprocity; worker performance; field experiment
Language: English
35 pages, February 17, 2026
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wp-2026-3-worker-rec...field-experiment.pdfFull text
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