Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2025 · Supreet Kaur、Sendhil Mullainathan、Suanna Oh、Frank Schilbach
中文摘要
担忧个人财务状况的工人可能难以专注于工作。若果真如此，减轻财务担忧或许能够提高生产率。我们在印度低收入计件制造业工人样本中检验这一假说。我们错开工资发放时间：部分工人较早获得工资并收到一笔现金注入，而另一些工人仍面临流动性约束。现金注入促使工人通过立即偿还债务、购买家庭必需品来减轻其财务担忧。随后，他们在工作中变得更具生产率：产出增加7%（0.11个标准差），且所犯下的代价高昂的非故意错误减少。手头现金更多的工人因此不仅工作更快，也更为专注，这表明其认知能力有所改善。这些效应集中于财务约束更强的工人群体。我们认为，礼物交换或营养等机制均无法解释这一结果。相反，我们的发现表明，财务压力——至少部分通过心理渠道——有可能恰恰在最需要钱的时候降低了工人的收入。
Abstract
Abstract Workers who are worried about their personal finances may find it hard to focus at work. If so, reducing financial concerns could increase productivity. We test this hypothesis in a sample of low-income Indian piece-rate manufacturing workers. We stagger when wages are paid out: some workers are paid earlier and receive a cash infusion while others remain liquidity constrained. The cash infusion leads workers to reduce their financial concerns by immediately paying off debts and buying household essentials. Subsequently, they become more productive at work: their output increases by 7% (0.11 std. dev.), and they make fewer costly, unintentional mistakes. Workers with more cash on hand thus not only work faster but also more attentively, suggesting improved cognition. These effects are concentrated among more financially constrained workers. We argue that mechanisms such as gift exchange or nutrition cannot account for our results. Instead, our findings suggest that financial strain, at least partly through psychological channels, has the potential to reduce earnings exactly when money is most needed.