nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2018‒10‒01
eight papers chosen by
Patrick Kampkötter
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

  1. Choking under pressure - Evidence of the causal effect of audience size on performance By René Böheim; Dominik Grübl; Mario Lackner
  2. Comparing the Effects of Current Pay and Defined Benefit Pensions on Employee Retention: Working Paper 2018-06 By Justin Falk; Nadia Karamcheva
  3. Training and changes in job tasks By Tamm, Marcus
  4. Dark triad characteristics between economics & business students in Croatia & Slovakia: what can be expected from the future employees? By Mario Bogdanović; Milota Vetráková; Stanislav Filip
  5. Differences in citation patterns across journal tiers in economics By María Victoria Anauati; Sebastian Galiani; Ramiro H. Gálvez
  6. The Right Stuff? Personality and Entrepreneurship By Barton H. Hamilton; Nicholas W. Papageorge; Nidhi Pande
  7. Can Online Surveys Represent the Entire Population? By Grewenig, Elisabeth; Lergetporer, Philipp; Simon, Lisa; Werner, Katharina; Woessmann, Ludger
  8. Training in the Great Recession: Evidence from an individual perspective By Dietz, Daniel; Zwick, Thomas

  1. By: René Böheim (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business); Dominik Grübl (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU)); Mario Lackner (Christian Doppler Laboratory "Aging, Health, and the Labor Market")
    Abstract: We analyze performance under pressure and estimate the causal effect of audience size on the success of free throws in top-level professional basketball. We use data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the seasons 2007/08 through 2015/16. We exploit the exogenous variation in weather conditions on game day to establish a causal link between attendance size and performance. Our results confirm a sizeable and strong negative effect of the number of spectators on performance. Home teams in (non-critical) situations at the beginning of games perform worse when the audience is larger. This result is consistent with the theory of a home choke rather than a home field advantage. Our results have potentially large implications for general questions of workplace design and help to further understand how the social environment affects performance. We demonstrate that the amount of support, i.e. positive feedback, from a friendly audience does affect performance.
    Keywords: performance under pressure, choking, social pressure
    JEL: D03 J24 M54
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp270&r=hrm
  2. By: Justin Falk; Nadia Karamcheva
    Abstract: Federal, state, and local governments continue to consider reducing the cost of their defined benefit pensions by decreasing annuity payments or having employees contribute a larger portion of their salaries toward them, thus reducing those workers’ current pay. Such reductions to compensation can decrease the human capital of a workforce through lower employee retention. Using data that span more than 30 years and reflect substantial policy changes to federal workers’ salary schedules and pension structure, we estimate that the average elasticity of job tenure with respect
    JEL: J26 J33 J45
    Date: 2018–06–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:wpaper:54056&r=hrm
  3. By: Tamm, Marcus
    Abstract: This study investigates the impact of non-formal training on job tasks of workers. The analysis is based on panel data from Germany covering detailed information on tasks performed at work at the level of individual workers. The results indicate that after training workers are more engaged in non-routine interactive tasks than they were before training. Analyses by topic of training reveal considerable heterogeneity in the impact of training on job tasks. In particular, it is "communication and soft skills" training which is associated with more non-routine interactive tasks.
    Keywords: job tasks,routinization,returns to education,training
    JEL: J24 J62 O33
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:764&r=hrm
  4. By: Mario Bogdanović; Milota Vetráková (Matej Bel University); Stanislav Filip (School of Economics and Management of Public Administration in Bratislava)
    Abstract: This paper deals with the " dark triad " personality and its components (Machiavellianism, narcissism, subclinical psychopathy) on economics & management student population in Croatia and Slovakia. Dark Triad represent important HRM area in which is trying to understand the " dark " side of human functioning which has potentially harmful impact on organization functioning and performance. Population of economics & management students is important in the context of HRM because of their future high potential to generate dysfunctional organizational behaviors, when they will be organizational employees, especially on management positions. The goal of this research was to gather the data about dark triad personality phenomenon, make the comparisons between Croatian and Slovak sample, present the potential organizational impact of employees with dark characteristics in organizational context and show the implications for HRM. For measurement of the dark triad components (variables) it is used questionnaire measurement that adopts the standardized short dark triad measurement instrument of Jones & Paulhus. Results of the Croatian students are compared with the results of Slovak students, and basically also with Canadian student sample. The basic results showed that 6% Croatian and 0.5% of Slovak economy & management students showed full dark triad profile, also there are found very significant statistical differences in the Machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy variables between the Croatian and Slovak samples, i.e. these characteristics were statistically higher in Croatian sample.
    Keywords: Slovaks,Croatian,comparative analysis,management,Dark triad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy),HRM
    Date: 2018–06–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01859322&r=hrm
  5. By: María Victoria Anauati; Sebastian Galiani; Ramiro H. Gálvez
    Abstract: Economics places a strong emphasis on publishing in a narrow set of top tier journals. Given that venue reputation does not necessarily go hand in hand with citation performance, we study how citation patterns differ across journal tiers (top five, second tier, and top field). By analyzing citations of 6,083 articles, we find that citation patterns effectively vary greatly across tiers, affecting not only articles’ total citations but also their distribution through time (i.e., their life cycles). Moreover, the way patterns differ across tiers is strongly associated to articles’ success (measured by citation counts) and fields of economics research.
    Keywords: Citation analysis, journals tiers, fields of economics research
    JEL: A14
    Date: 2018–09–20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000518:016701&r=hrm
  6. By: Barton H. Hamilton; Nicholas W. Papageorge; Nidhi Pande
    Abstract: We construct a structural model of entry into self-employment to evaluate the impact of policies supporting entrepreneurship. Previous work has recognized that workers may opt for self-employment due to the non-pecuniary benefits of running a business and not necessarily because they are good at it. Other literature has examined how socio-emotional skills, such as personality traits, affect selection into self-employment. We link these two lines of inquiry. The model we estimate captures three factors that affect selection into self-employment: credit constraints, relative earnings and preferences. We incorporate personality traits by allowing them to affect sector-specific earnings as well as preferences. The estimated model reveals that the personality traits that make entrepreneurship profitable are not always the same traits driving people to open a business. This has important consequences for entrepreneurship policies. For example, subsidies for small businesses do not attract talented-but-reluctant entrepreneurs, but instead attract individuals with personality traits associated with strong preferences for running a business and low-quality business ideas.
    JEL: J23 J24 J31 J32
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25006&r=hrm
  7. By: Grewenig, Elisabeth (ifo Institute); Lergetporer, Philipp (ifo Institute); Simon, Lisa (ifo Institute); Werner, Katharina (ifo Institute); Woessmann, Ludger (ifo Institute and LMU Munich)
    Abstract: A general concern with the representativeness of online surveys is that they exclude the \"offline\" population that does not use the internet. We run a large-scale opinion survey with (1) onliners in web mode, (2) offliners in face-to-face mode, and (3) onliners in face-to-face mode. We find marked response differences between onliners and offliners in the mixed-mode setting (1 vs. 2). Response differences between onliners and offliners in the same face-to-face mode (2 vs. 3) disappear when controlling for background characteristics, indicating mode effects rather than unobserved population differences. Differences in background characteristics of onliners in the two modes (1 vs. 3) indicate that mode effects partly reflect sampling differences. In our setting, re-weighting online-survey observations appears a pragmatic solution when aiming at representativeness for the entire population.
    Keywords: online survey; representativeness; mode effects; offliner; public opinion;
    JEL: C83 D91 I20
    Date: 2018–09–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:117&r=hrm
  8. By: Dietz, Daniel; Zwick, Thomas
    Abstract: This paper analyses the effect of the economic crisis in 2008 and 2009 on individual training activities of different employee groups within establishments. We use a unique German linked employer-employee panel data set with detailed information on individual training history (WeLL-ADIAB). The so-called Great Recession can be seen as an exogenous, unexpected, and time-limited shock. Therefore, our quasi-experimental setting using Diff-in-Diff analyses reveals the causal impact of the crisis on the training participation and the number of training measures. We find a direct negative effect of the crisis on individual training activities in 2009 and 2010. The negative effect therefore sets in with a time lag and lasts until after the recession. Furthermore, the recession effect is stronger for employees in unskilled jobs than for employees in skilled jobs.
    Keywords: Training,Financial Crisis,Linked Employer Employee Data Set
    JEL: M53 O16
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:18037&r=hrm

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