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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Collis, Manuela R. (University of Toronto); Van Effenterre, Clémentine (University of Toronto) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how much individuals value a workplace that doesn't tolerate hostility, and how these preferences affect sorting in the labor market. We conduct a choice experiment involving 2, 048 participants recruited from recent graduates and alumni from a large public university. Our results show that individuals are willing to forgo a significant portion of their earnings—between 12 and 36 percent of their wage—to avoid hostile work environments, valuations substantially exceeding those for remote work (7 percent). Women exhibit a stronger aversion to exclusionary workplaces and environments with sexual harassment. Combining survey evidence, experimental variations of workplace environments, and individual labor market outcomes, we show that both disutility from workplace hostility and perceptions of risk contribute to gender gaps in early-career choices and in pay. To quantify equilibrium implications, we develop a model of compensating differentials calibrated to our experimental estimates. Using counterfactual exercises, we find that gender differences in risk of workplace hostility drive both the remote pay penalty and office workers' rents. |
| Keywords: | compensating differentials, workplace hostility, gender |
| JEL: | J16 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18302 |
| By: | Daniel Bird; Alexander Frug |
| Abstract: | Mid- and low-level managers play a significant role within the organizational hierarchy, far beyond monitoring. It is often their responsibility to respond to opportunities and threats within their units by adjusting their subordinates' assignments. Most such managers, however, lack the authority to adapt their subordinates' wages. In- stead, they rely on other, more restrictive incentive schemes. We study the interaction between a front-line manager and worker, and characterize the "managerial style" as a function of the players' relative patience and information. |
| Keywords: | asymmetric discounting, front-line management, perishable incentives |
| JEL: | D21 D82 D86 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1537 |
| By: | David Almog |
| Abstract: | Concerns about how workers are perceived can deter effective collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI). In a field experiment on a large online labor market, I hired 450 U.S.-based remote workers to complete an image-categorization job assisted by AI recommendations. Workers were incentivized by the prospect of a contract extension based on an HR evaluator's feedback. I find that workers adopt AI recommendations at lower rates when their reliance on AI is visible to the evaluator, resulting in a measurable decline in task performance. The effects are present despite a conservative design in which workers know that the evaluator is explicitly instructed to assess expected accuracy on the same AI-assisted task. This reduction in AI reliance persists even when the evaluator is reassured about workers' strong performance history on the platform, underscoring how difficult these concerns are to alleviate. Leveraging the platform's public feedback feature, I introduce a novel incentive-compatible elicitation method showing that workers fear heavy reliance on AI signals a lack of confidence in their own judgment, a trait they view as essential when collaborating with AI. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.18582 |
| By: | Liepmann, Hannah (ILO International Labour Organization); Hegewisch, Ariane |
| Abstract: | While population ageing increases the demand for care work, new technologies, including AI, reinforce the importance of human interaction, with recent research finding significant wage premiums for social skills. Against this background, we investigate two factors behind the gender wage gap: occupational gender segregation and lower pay in female-dominated occupations, especially care work, where social skills are central. Using 1972-2024 CPS data, we show that occupational gender segregation remains pronounced in the United States, with many care occupations remaining female-dominated. This continues to correlate with lower wages. Conditional on observable characteristics, a 1 percentage point increase in the occupational share of women during 2015-24 was associated with a wage decrease of 0.22 percent for women and 0.20 percent for men. We then analyze whether returns to social skills are distorted in the care sector, where we hypothesize that the wage returns on workers' performance are lower due to the public-goods aspect of care work. Based on combined CPS and O*Net data, we investigate occupation-level skills returns for 2015-24. They are indeed insignificant for care workers but sizeable for business services workers. |
| Keywords: | returns to skills, care work, future of work, undervaluation of women's work, occupational gender segregation, social skills, new technologies and AI, gender wage gap |
| JEL: | H41 J16 J21 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18291 |
| By: | Sauermann, Jan (Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Copenhagen Business School; Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); ROA, Maastricht University; UCLS, Uppsala University.); Butschek, Sebastian (Leopold-Franzens Universität) |
| Abstract: | To estimate the causal effect of employment protection on firms’ worker selection, we study a policy change that reduced dismissal costs for the employers of over a tenth of Sweden’s workforce. Our difference-in-differences analysis of firms’ hiring uses individual ability measures including estimated worker fixed effects, GPA at age 15, and military test scores. We find that the reform reduced minimum hire quality by around 2%. Our results show that firms both decrease their hiring thresholds and hire more workers. We find that firms increasingly hire young, foreign born and long-term non-employed individuals, suggesting potential welfare gains of the reform. |
| Keywords: | worker selection; screening; hiring standard; employment protection; dismissal costs. |
| JEL: | D22 J24 J38 M51 |
| Date: | 2025–11–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2025_022 |