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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Baktash, Mehrzad B.; Heywood, John S.; Jirjahn, Uwe |
| Abstract: | Using German survey data, we show that performance pay is associated with a substantially lower gender hours gap. While performance pay increases the work hours of both men and women, the increase is much larger for women than for men. This finding persists in worker fixed effects estimates. We argue our finding likely reflects differences in household production and specialization by gender. Thus, we show that performance pay is not associated with increased hours for men with children in the household. Yet, performance pay is associated with a very large increase in hours for women with children in the household. |
| Keywords: | Performance Pay, Contracted Hours, Actual Hours, Gender |
| JEL: | D10 J22 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1450&r= |
| By: | DeVaro, Jed (California State University, East Bay) |
| Abstract: | In a new model of work schedules, employers choose the number of working hours and either dictate the exact hours to be worked or delegate that decision to workers via flextime. Workers' preferences over schedules influence their productivities. An inverted-U-shaped hours-output profile arises; flextime policies shift its peak to the right. Long hours are found to go hand-in-hand with flextime, and the employer finds flextime less appealing when wages exogenously increase. Analysis of a worker-employer matched panel of British workplaces surveyed in 2004 and 2011 reveals that flextime and other flexible work practices mitigate the productivity-eroding consequences of long hours. |
| Keywords: | work hours, labor productivity, human resources management practices, flextime, work-life flexibility, workplace flexibility, work schedules, scheduling, working from home, flexible work practices, diminishing returns |
| JEL: | J20 J23 J24 J32 M52 M50 M59 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17061&r= |
| By: | Jaime Arellano-Bover; Nicola Bianchi; Salvatore Lattanzio; Matteo Paradisi |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the interaction between the decrease in the gender pay gap and the stagnation in the careers of younger workers, analyzing data from the United States, Italy, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We propose a model of the labor market in which a larger supply of older workers can crowd out younger workers from top-paying positions. These negative career spillovers disproportionately affect the career trajectories of younger men because they are more likely than younger women to hold higher-paying jobs at baseline. The data strongly support this cohort-driven interpretation of the shrinking gender pay gap. The whole decline in the gap originates from (i) newer worker cohorts who enter the labor market with smaller-than-average gender pay gaps and (ii) older worker cohorts who exit with higher-than-average gender pay gaps. As predicted by the model, the gender pay convergence at labor-market entry stems from younger men's larger positional losses in the wage distribution. Younger men experience the largest positional losses within higher-paying firms, in which they become less represented over time at a faster rate than younger women. Finally, we document that labor-market exit is the sole contributor to the decline in the gender pay gap after the mid-1990s, which implies no full gender pay convergence for the foreseeable future. Consistent with our framework, we find evidence that most of the remaining gender pay gap at entry depends on predetermined educational choices. |
| JEL: | J11 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32612&r= |
| By: | Arntz, Melanie; Findeisen, Sebastian; Maurer, Stephan; Schlenker, Oliver |
| Abstract: | This study quantifies the relationship between workplace digitalization, i.e., the increasing use of frontier technologies, and workers' health outcomes using novel and representative German linked employer-employee data. Based on changes in individual-level use of technologies between 2011 and 2019, we find that digitalization induces similar shifts into more complex and service-oriented tasks across all workers, but exacerbates health inequality between cognitive and manual workers. Unlike more mature, computer-based technologies, frontier technologies of the recent technology wave substantially lower manual workers' subjective health and increase sick leave, while leaving cognitive workers unaffected. We provide evidence that the effects are mitigated in firms that provide training and assistance in the adjustment process for workers. |
| Keywords: | health, inequality, technology, machines, automation, tasks, capital-labor substitution |
| JEL: | I14 J21 J23 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:300006&r= |
| By: | Georgiadis, Andreas; Kornelakis, Andreas |
| Abstract: | Extant literature documents a relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and performance, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still not well understood. We develop a theoretical framework of the HRM-performance relationship fusing an employment systems approach with human capital theory and articulating the mechanisms and temporal pathways linking HRM bundles and service quality. We use a unique and large panel dataset from the English social care sector to test our framework. The results highlight the significant role of collective human capital and voluntary turnover in the dynamic relationship between bundles of HRM practices and service quality. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital, HR Management, Firm Performance, Turnover, Training |
| JEL: | J24 M12 L25 J63 M53 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1452&r= |
| By: | John Van Reenen; Agnes Norris Keiller |
| Abstract: | Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent, yet little is known about the capacity of firms to withstand such disasters and adapt to their increased frequency. We examine this issue using a the latest wave of the World Management Survey (WMS) that includes new questions on firms’ climate change perceptions and adaptation behavior. Combining this with geocoded data on natural disasters and previous WMS waves, we create a panel spanning 8, 000 firms across 33 countries and three decades that shows exposure to disasters decreases growth inputs, outputs and firm survival. More importantly, firms with structured management practices are more resilient, suffering much smaller drops in jobs and capital. To understand the mechanisms behind this resilience, we use the new WMS climate questions to show better managed firms have more accurate perceptions of climate-related risks to their businesses. Such firms are also more likely to have implemented measures to adapt to climate change both overall and in response to their perceived climate risk. Other aspects of firm organisation, such as decentralisation, also help protect against disasters, but their adaptation behaviour is not well-targeted. These results show that improving management is one way to help protect economies from climate change shocks. |
| JEL: | Q54 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32595&r= |
| By: | Bnaya Dreyfuss; Raphael Raux |
| Abstract: | How do humans assess the performance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across different tasks? AI has been noted for its surprising ability to accomplish very complex tasks while failing seemingly trivial ones. We show that humans engage in ``performance anthropomorphism'' when assessing AI capabilities: they project onto AI the ability model that they use to assess humans. In this model, observing an agent fail an easy task is highly diagnostic of a low ability, making them unlikely to succeed at any harder task. Conversely, a success on a hard task makes successes on any easier task likely. We experimentally show that humans project this model onto AI. Both prior beliefs and belief updating about AI performance on standardized math questions appear consistent with the human ability model. This contrasts with actual AI performance, which is uncorrelated with human difficulty in our context, and makes such beliefs misspecified. Embedding our framework into an adoption model, we show that patterns of under- and over-adoption can be sustained in an equilibrium with anthropomorphic beliefs. |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2406.05408&r= |