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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Alex Bryson; John Forth; Lucy Stokes |
| Abstract: | This paper uses linked employer-employee data to investigate the relationship between employees’ subjective well-being and workplace performance in Britain. The analyses show a clear, positive and statistically-significant relationship between the average level of job satisfaction at the workplace and workplace performance. This finding is present in both cross-sectional and panel analyses and is robust to various estimation methods and model specifications. In contrast, we find no association between levels of job-related affect and workplace performance. |
| Keywords: | Subjective wellbeing; job satisfaction; job-related affect; workplace performance |
| JEL: | J28 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:63803&r=all |
| By: | Evangelia Chalioti (Cowles Foundation, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies career concerns in teams where the support a worker receives depends on fellow team members’ effort and ability. In this setting, by exerting effort and providing support, a worker can influence her own and her teammates’ performances in order to bias the learning process in her favor. To manipulate the market’s assessments, we argue that in equilibrium, a worker has incentives to help or even sabotage her colleagues in order to signal that she is of higher ability. In a multiperiod stationary framework, we show that the stationary level of work effort is above and help effort is below their efficient levels. |
| Keywords: | Career concerns, Team incentives, Incentives to help, Incentives to sabotage |
| JEL: | D83 J24 M54 |
| Date: | 2015–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2020&r=all |
| By: | Stefan Pichler; Nicolas R. Ziebarth |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a test for the existence and degree of contagious presenteeism and negative externalities in sickness insurance schemes. First, we theoretically decompose moral hazard into shirking and contagious presenteeism behavior and derive testable conditions. Then, we implement the test exploiting German sick pay reforms and administrative industry-level data on certified sick leave by diagnoses. The labor supply adjustment for contagious diseases is significantly smaller than for non-contagious diseases. Lastly, using Google Flu data and the staggered implementation of US sick leave reforms, we show that flu rates decrease after employees gain access to paid sick leave. |
| Keywords: | Sickness Insurance, Paid Sick Leave, Presenteeism, Contagious Diseases, Infections, Negative Externalities, Shirking, US, Germany |
| JEL: | I12 I13 I18 J22 J28 J32 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1509&r=all |
| By: | Semih Tumen |
| Abstract: | I develop an intra-firm theory of group design and teamwork in the presence of peer effects. The purpose is to understand the interlinkages between intra-firm group formation and the extent of wage dispersion within the firm. Given a set of heterogeneous workers, the manager faces the challenge of allocating workers into endogenous groups (or teams) to maximize total profits. The optimal allocation features locational proximity between workers with similar productivity levels. I discuss the implications of this allocation on intra-firm wage outcomes. The main idea is that the wage paid to a single worker is determined by the productivity levels of the teammates as well as the worker's own productivity. This means that team composition is critical to understanding the within-firm productivity and wage differentials. I show that intra-firm wage dispersion is more pronounced when workers are more alike within each team and more different across the teams. I provide numerical exercises designed to illustrate how the model's predictions change as the key parameters are varied. One striking result is that a rise in the correlation between education and productivity (this can be interpreted as hiring workers with vocational education) leads to a decline in wage inequality within the firm. I also show that changes in the dispersion of worker efficiency lead to non-monotonic effects on within-firm wage inequality. |
| Keywords: | Group design, Peer effects in the workplace, Within-firm pay differences, Sorting, Selectivity |
| JEL: | J31 L22 L23 M51 M52 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:wpaper:1516&r=all |
| By: | Ramon Bastida Vialcanet (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya); Frederic Marimon (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya); Lluís Carreras (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to establish a measurement scale for human resource management (HRM) practices in nonprofit organizations and to analyze their impact on the job satisfaction of their employees. The results demonstrate that 8 out of the 20 analyzed variables determine the measurement scale of HRM practices in these organizations. These variables are related to psychological demands, active work and development possibilities, social relations and leadership, and the degree of coherence in the organization with its principles. According to the results, these practices have an impact on job satisfaction in this type of nonprofit organization. The results are significant, given that these organizations employ 9-11.5% of the active population in European Union countries. |
| Keywords: | Human resource management; HRM; human resource practices; job satisfaction; non-profit organizations |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:ibmpro:3005348&r=all |
| By: | Margaret Brehm; Scott A. Imberman; Michael F. Lovenheim |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effect of the individual incentives teachers face in a teacher-based value-added merit pay tournament on student achievement. We first build an illustrative model in which teachers use proximity to an award threshold to update their information about their own ability, which informs their expected marginal return to effort. The model predicts that those who are closer to an award cutoff in a given year will increase effort and thus will have higher achievement gains in the subsequent year. However, if value-added scores are too noisy, teachers will not respond. Using administrative teacher-student linked data, we test this prediction employing a method akin to the bunching estimator of Saez (2010). Specifically, we examine whether teachers who are proximal to a cutoff in one year exhibit excess gains in test score growth in the next year. Our results show consistent evidence that teachers do not respond to the incentives they face under this program. In line with our model, we argue that a likely reason for the lack of responsiveness is that the value-added measures used to determine awards were too noisy to provide informative feedback about one's ability. This highlights the importance of value-added precision in the design of incentive pay systems. |
| JEL: | H75 I21 J33 J38 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21598&r=all |
| By: | Rui Castro (University of Western Ontario); Daniele Coen-Pirani (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Abstract: | We study the evolution of educational attainment of the 1932–1972 cohorts using a human capital investment model with heterogeneous learning ability. Inter-cohort variation in schooling is driven by changes in skill prices, tuition, and education quality over time, and average learning ability across cohorts. Under static expectations the model accounts for the main empirical patterns. Rising skill prices for college explain the rapid increase in college graduation till the 1948 cohort. The decline in average learning ability, calibrated to match the evolution of test scores, explains half of the stagnation in college graduation between the 1948 and 1972 cohorts. |
| Keywords: | Educational Attainment; Human Capital; Skill Prices; Inequality; Cohorts |
| JEL: | I24 J24 J31 O11 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwo:hcuwoc:20155&r=all |
| By: | SELLAMI, Sana; VERHAEST, Dieter; NONNEMAN, Walter; VAN TRIER, Walter |
| Abstract: | We investigate the role of four motives to participate in higher education – investment, educational consumption, student life consumption and social pressure – on field of study choices and academic performance and on three labour market outcomes – over-education, wages and job satisfaction. We use data on three cohorts of about 3000 Flemish individuals documenting the transition from education to work. Principal components are used to identify the four study motives. Effects of study motives on field of study choices and academic performance are estimated using logit respectively Poisson regression. Effects on over-education are measured by two-bit regression and on wages and job satisfaction using standard and IV panel estimates. Key findings are that individuals motivated by education consumption are less likely to be overeducated but face a stronger job satisfaction penalty to over-education than other workers. Our results also suggest that individuals who continue in education because of student life consumption have a higher likelihood of over-education. |
| Keywords: | Educational motives, Higher education, Graduates, Wages, Job satisfaction, Underemployment, Over-qualification |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ant:wpaper:2015014&r=all |
| By: | John V. Winters (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Previous research suggests that the local stock of human capital creates positive externalities within local labor markets and plays an important role in regional economic development. However, there is still considerable uncertainty over what types of human capital are most important. Both national and local policymakers in the U.S. have called for efforts to increase the stock of college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but data availability has thus far prevented researchers from directly connecting STEM education to human capital externalities. This paper uses the 2009-2011 American Community Survey to examine the external effects of college graduates in STEM and non STEM fields on the wages of other workers in the same metropolitan area. I find that both types of college graduates create positive wage externalities, but STEM graduates create much larger externalities. |
| Keywords: | human capital externalities, STEM, wage growth, agglomeration, urban economics, economic geography |
| JEL: | J24 R23 |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:okl:wpaper:1409&r=all |
| By: | Hanley Chiang; Alison Wellington; Kristin Hallgren; Cecilia Speroni; Mariesa Herrmann; Steven Glazerman; Jill Constantine |
| Abstract: | As part of Mathematica’s seven-year evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program, this is the first report to describe the effects of performance-based bonuses within the TIF program. Researchers found that TIF schools’ student achievement on standardized tests in reading was higher by 1 percentile point—the equivalent of about three weeks of additional learning—for schools that offered pay-for-performance bonuses, compared with ones that did not. The study also showed similarly positive, but not statistically significant, improvements in math. |
| Keywords: | Teacher quality, TIF, value-added, pay-for-performance |
| JEL: | I |
| Date: | 2015–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:08b301440c004d43b9b71754bb89b3ff&r=all |
| By: | Lorenzo Cappellari (Università Cattolica Milano); Antonio Di Paolo (AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | We exploit the 1983 language-in-education reform that introduced Catalan alongside Spanish as medium of instruction in Catalan schools to estimate the labour market value of bilingual education. Identification is achieved in a difference-in-differences framework exploiting variation in exposure to the reform across years of schooling and years of birth. We find positive wage returns to bilingual education and no effects on employment, hours of work or occupation. Results are robust to education-cohort specific trends or selection into schooling and are mainly stemming from exposure at compulsory education. We show that the effect worked through increased Catalan proficiency for Spanish speakers and that there were also positive effects for Catalan speakers from families with low education. These findings are consistent with human capital effects rather than with more efficient job search or reduced discrimination. Exploiting the heterogeneous effects of the reform as an instrument for proficiency we find sizeable earnings effects of skills in Catalan. |
| Keywords: | Bilingual education, returns to schooling, language-in-education reform, Catalonia |
| JEL: | J24 J31 I28 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2015-03&r=all |