Flexible Work Arrangements, Labor Supply and Firm Outcomes

Last registered on April 23, 2025

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Flexible Work Arrangements, Labor Supply and Firm Outcomes

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0015588

Initial registration date

March 18, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

March 21, 2025, 11:05 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

April 23, 2025, 7:30 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

India

Region

Tamil Nadu

Primary Investigator

Name

Shreya Chandra

Affiliation

University of California, Berkeley

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2024-11-25

End date

2025-05-10

Keywords

Firms & Productivity, Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

A recent literature emphasizes the role of workers’ preferences for flexibility in explaining the prevalence of self-employment or casual work over wage-work in developing countries. While flexibility is an important job attribute for workers, flexible work arrangements may not always work for firms, particularly in settings that demand greater coordination among worker tasks (e.g, team production). In this project, I study the impact of regular labor supply and increased worker coordination on worker and firm level productivity in the context of a large apparel manufacturing cluster in India. The status quo work arrangement in these firms is that workers (tailors) choose their own work timings, despite clear gains to both workers and firms of coordinating work times. Such flexibility slows the overall speed of production by limiting the extent of task specialization among workers. I propose to work with a sample of small firms (5-15 workers) and their workers, and will incentivize all workers in treatment firms to come to work at the same time for a period of 4-weeks. Workers in treatment firms will either receive a high or a low incentive, allowing me to estimate workers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for flexibility by observing daily compliance at different bonus amounts. Detailed data on daily production at the worker and firm level will allow me to estimate the effects of increased worker coordination on firm level outcomes such as output, profits, revenues, costs, and order characteristics.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Chandra, Shreya. 2025. "Flexible Work Arrangements, Labor Supply and Firm Outcomes." AEA RCT Registry. April 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15588-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2024-12-02

Intervention End Date

2025-05-03

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

- Worker compliance, attendance, work hours, production output and earnings (daily and weekly)
- Worker productivity (weekly)
- Firm level coordination among workers (daily)
- Firm level production output (daily and weekly)
- Firm level profits, revenues (weekly)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Firms will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups - (A) 4-week treatment (50%), and (C) Control (50%). The treatment group will be further randomized into (A1) high (75% of treatment firms) and (A2) low incentive (25%) sub-treatments, with daily bonus amounts set at Rs. 100 (high) and Rs. 50 (low) respectively. These amounts are approximately 15% and 7.5% of worker’s average daily earnings.

Treatment incentives are conditional on the worker arriving at the firm and starting work by the company’s preferred start time (elicited at baseline). Thus, the incentive encourages both on-time arrival and attendance. The total incentive amount will be added to workers’ weekly earnings (the status quo pay frequency), and payments will be made close to the usual pay-day (end of the week). All workers in the firm are eligible for the same daily incentive amount but final payouts will differ based on individual compliance during the study period.

Workers in control firms will receive unconditional incentives for the same period, matched to a randomly chosen low treatment firm each week to address concerns about income effects on worker productivity. Given the smaller proportion of low treatment firms, multiple control firms will be matched to a single low-treatment firm. These (randomized) groupings will be made separately for each week.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization done by computer. Phase 1 randomization was unstratified. Phase 2 randomization was stratified on baseline level of coordination in worker arrival times with respect to the owner's preferred start time, as elicited at baseline.

Randomization Unit

Firm level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

100 firms.

Sample size: planned number of observations

100 firms, 700 workers (assuming on average 7 workers per firm), - This project involves daily data collection on worker attendance and production for a 6-week period, ie 36 days per firm/worker. 24 out of 36 days are incentive work days, the remaining are pre-incentives days. - Worker compliance, attendance, work hours and production outcomes will be at the worker-day level (25,000 worker days) - Firm output and profits will be computed weekly (600 firm-weeks) as well as overall (100 firms)

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

50 treatment firms, 50 control firms.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB