nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2020‒11‒09
five papers chosen by
Patrick Kampkötter
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

  1. The Emergence of Procyclical Fertility: The Role of Gender Differences in Employment Risk By Sena Coskun; Husnu Dalgic
  2. Productivity Versus Motivation in Adolescent Human Capital Production: Evidence from a Structurally-Motivated Field Experiment By Christopher Cotton; Brent R. Hickman; John List; Joseph P. Price; Sutanuka Roy
  3. Overreaction and Working Memory By Hassan Afrouzi; Spencer Yongwook Kwon; Augustin Landier; Yueran Ma; David Thesmar
  4. A Study of the Relationship between Employees f Behavior and Performance Rating By Yuji Takaoka; Seiko Otomo; Ryota Kirihata; Kazutoshi Takahira; Hirakimoto Hiroya
  5. Information Design and Career Concerns By David Rodina

  1. By: Sena Coskun; Husnu Dalgic
    Abstract: Fertility in the US exhibits a procyclical pattern since 80s. We argue that gender differences in employment risk leads to procyclical fertility; men mostly work in volatile and procyclical industries whereas women are likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical industries. Our quantitative framework features a general equlibrium OLG model with endogeneous fertility and human capital choice and it shows that current gender industry composition in the US data accounts for all of this procyclicality. Moreover, we argue that gender income ratio (female to male) is higher in bad times which tilts the quality-quantity trade-off towards quality.
    Keywords: fertility, industry cyclicality, industry gender segregation, gender income gap, quality-quantity trade-off
    JEL: E24 E32 J11 J13 J16 J21 J24
    Date: 2020–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_142v1&r=all
  2. By: Christopher Cotton (Queen's University); Brent R. Hickman (Olin Business School, University of Washington); John List (University of Chicago); Joseph P. Price (Brigham Young University); Sutanuka Roy
    Abstract: We leverage a field experiment across three distinct school districts to identify key pieces of a structural model of adolescent human capital production. Our focus is inspired by the contemporary psychology of education literature, which expresses learning as a function of the ratio of the time spent on learning to the time needed to learn. By capturing two crucial student-level unobservables—which we denote as academic efficiency (turning inputs into outputs) and time preference (motivation)—our field experiment lends insights into the underpinnings of adolescent skill formation and provides a novel view of how to lessen racial and gender achievement gaps. One general insight is that students who are falling behind their peers, whether correlated to race, gender, or school district, are doing so because of academic efficiency rather than time preference. We view this result, and others found in our data, as fundamental to practitioners, academics, and policymakers interested in designing strategies to provide equal opportunities to students.
    Keywords: Human capital, field experiment, structural econometrics, psychology of education, learning, school districts, school quality, demographics, gender gap, racial gap
    JEL: C93 I21 I24 J22 J24 O15
    Date: 2020–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:wpaper:1444&r=all
  3. By: Hassan Afrouzi; Spencer Yongwook Kwon; Augustin Landier; Yueran Ma; David Thesmar
    Abstract: We study how biases in expectations vary across different settings, through a large-scale randomized experiment where participants forecast stable random processes. The experiment allows us to control the data generating process and the participants’ relevant information sets, so we can cleanly measure forecast biases. We find that forecasts display significant overreaction to the most recent observation. Moreover, overreaction is especially pronounced for less persistent processes and longer forecast horizons. We also find that commonly-used expectations models do not easily account for the variation in overreaction across settings. We provide a theory of expectations formation with imperfect utilization of past information. Our model closely fits the empirical findings.
    JEL: C91 D03 D83 D84
    Date: 2020–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27947&r=all
  4. By: Yuji Takaoka (Asahi Kasei Medical Corporation Corporate Planning & Coordination Division Human Resources Department); Seiko Otomo (Asahi Kasei Corporation Human Resources Department); Ryota Kirihata (Asahi Kasei Corporation Human Resources Department); Kazutoshi Takahira (Asahi Kasei Corporation Human Resources Department); Hirakimoto Hiroya (Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics)
    Abstract: In order to achieve sustainable economic growth in a declining population, it is important to increase productivity through human resource development. In other words, it is important for companies to create an environment in which their employees can continue to develop their capabilities and produce more results. Given this background, this study aimed to examine the relationship between various behaviors promoting capabilities and outcomes. A survey of 673 employees of Company X, a general chemical manufacturer, was conducted. We found that organizational citizenship behaviors and voluntary job improvement behaviors were positively related to outcomes measured by supervisors f performance rating at non-managerial levels. At managerial levels, some of the innovative behaviors were found to be positively related to outcomes. Furthermore, learning behaviors were not positively related to outcomes regardless of position.
    Keywords: Performance rating, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Innovative behavior, Human resources development
    JEL: M12 M54
    Date: 2020–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:2014&r=all
  5. By: David Rodina
    Abstract: This paper studies the interplay between information and incentives in principal-agent relationships with career concerns. I derive conditions for when more precise information about performance or more uncertainty about the agent's ability lead to stronger incentives due to career concerns, absent any ad-hoc restrictions on the production technology or set of information structures. A key condition for deriving these comparative statics is how e ort changes the informativeness of performance signals regarding ability. However, more sophisticated information revelation technologies that are implicitly ruled out in the literature overturn commonly held assertions regarding information design and career concerns.
    Keywords: Information Design
    JEL: D8
    Date: 2020–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_220&r=all

This nep-hrm issue is ©2020 by Patrick Kampkötter. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.