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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Janke, Katharina; Propper, Carol; Sadun, Raffaella |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether top managers affect the performance of large and complex public sector organizations, using as a case study CEOs of English public hospitals (large, complex organizations with multi-million turnover). We study the extent to which CEOs are differentiated in terms of their pay, as well as a wide range of hospital production measures including inputs, intermediate operational outcomes and clinical outcomes. Pay differentials suggest that the market perceives CEOs to be differentiated. However, we find little evidence of CEOs' impact on hospital production. These results question the effectiveness of leadership changes to improve performance in the public sector. |
| Keywords: | CEOs; Hospitals; NHS; Public sector; style |
| JEL: | H51 I11 L32 M12 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13726&r=all |
| By: | Mikhail Drugov (New Economic School and CEPR); Dmitry Ryvkin (Department of Economics, Florida State University) |
| Abstract: | Tournaments are settings where agents' performance is determined jointly by effort and luck, and top performers are rewarded. We study the impact of the \shape of luck" { the details of the distribution of performance shocks { on incentives in tournaments. The focus is on the effect of competition, defined as the number of rivals an agent faces, which can be deterministic or stochastic. We show that individual and aggregate effort in tournaments are affected by an increase in competition in ways that depend critically on the shape of the density and failure (hazard) rate of shocks. When shocks have heavy tails, aggregate effort can decrease with stronger competition. |
| Keywords: | tournament, competition, heavy tails, stochastic number of players, unimodality, log-supermodularity, failure rate |
| JEL: | C72 D72 D82 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0251&r=all |
| By: | Dalton, Patricio (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Rüschenpöhler, Julius (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Uras, Burak (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Zia, Bilal |
| Abstract: | Can best practices of successful business peers influence the efficiency and growth of small-scale enterprises? Does it matter how this information is disseminated? This paper conducts a field experiment among urban retail shop owners in Indonesia to address these research questions. Through extensive baseline quantitative and qualitative assessments, we develop a handbook of local best practices that associates specific business practices with performance and provides detailed implementation guidance informed by exemplary local shop owners. The handbook is distributed to a randomly selected sample of shop owners and is complemented with three experiential learning modules: one group is invited to watch a documentary video on experiences of highly successful peers, another is offered light in-shop assistance on the implementation of the handbook, and a third group is offered both. Eighteen months after the intervention, we find no effect of offering the handbook alone, but significant impact on practice adoption when the handbook is coupled with experiential learning. On business performance we find sizable and significant improvements as well, up to a 35% increase in profits and 16.7% in revenues. The types of practices adopted map these performance improvements to efficiency gains rather than other channels. The analysis suggests these interventions are simple, scalable, and highly cost-effective. |
| Keywords: | business practices; small-scale enterprises; peer knowledge; efficiency gains; sicoal learning |
| JEL: | O12 L26 M20 O31 O33 O17 M50 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiucen:fc650e2f-88cf-4d75-8257-f221751d3db0&r=all |
| By: | Sascha O. Becker; Ana Fernandes; Doris Weichselbaumer |
| Abstract: | Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer’s perspective, in their fertile age they are also at “risk” of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a largescale correspondence test in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, sending out approx. 9,000 job applications, varying job candidate’s personal characteristics such as marital status and age of children. We find evidence that, for part-time jobs, married women with older kids, who likely finished their childbearing cycle and have more projectable childcare chores than women with very young kids, are at a significant advantage vis-àvis other groups of women. At the same time, married, but childless applicants, who have a higher likelihood to become pregnant, are at a disadvantage compared to single, but childless applicants to part-time jobs. Such effects are not present for full-time jobs, presumably, because by applying to these in contrast to part-time jobs, women signal that they have arranged for external childcare. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Discrimination; Experimental economics |
| JEL: | C93 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2019_10&r=all |