The survey
Our evidence comes from a survey we conducted to investigate the salary pay-cycle
choices at our university. At American University, as at many other educational institutions,
faculty members were traditionally offered a choice of pay period. Each full-time,
permanent faculty member chose to receive a 9-month, academic-year salary either over
9-months or over 12-months. Choosing the latter simply resulted in an even distribution of
the 9-month nominal salary over a full 12-months (the academic-year plus the subsequent
summer). Clearly, this reduces the present value of the salary payments. For example, consider
a professor receiving US$ 60,000 in after-tax income who discounts the end-of-month
salary payments at a 0.05 annual discount rate. At the beginning of the academic-year, the
discounted present value of the 9-month pay plan is US$ 58,767.89, whereas the discounted
present value of the 12-month pay plan is US$ 58,404.86—a difference of US$ 363.03. In
a present value sense, the 9-month pay-cycle is naturally more valuable. So if this professor
is on a 12-month pay-cycle, a move to a 9-month cycle with no changes in the spending
stream would be worth hundreds of dollars in additional wealth each year. While this is not
a huge amount, it constitutes a high hourly return for the work involved. Also, since the
decision need be made only once, the implied increase in wealth is an order of magnitude
larger for any faculty member planning to remain at the university for several years. Finally,
the decision to maximize the present value of income is an extremely simple subcomponent
of the problem solved by consumers in the standard neoclassical theory of the consumer,
and it is separable from the rest of the consumption problem.