|
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Jason Sockin; Pawel Adrjan; Mária Balgová; Simon Jäger; Jonas Jessen |
| Abstract: | Discrete choice experiments are widely used to estimate workers' willingness to pay (WTP) for job amenities under the assumption that varying an attribute does not change workers' beliefs about other job attributes. We test this assumption by embedding an amenity with a known market price-a popular monthly public transport pass-in a large-scale discrete choice experiment with German workers. Many workers, including public transport users, overvalue the ticket by more than 100%, despite WTP for other attributes aligning with the literature. A complementary belief-elicitation experiment shows that advertising an amenity, such as the pass but also common amenities like work from home, causally shifts beliefs about unlisted attributes of the job. Posted wages similarly signal unlisted attributes so that wage variation, the money metric for WTP calculation, is itself contaminated by belief spillovers-such as higher pay signaling heightened stress. These spillovers imply that discrete choice estimates capture perceived bundles rather than isolated attributes, and distort current estimates of non-wage compensation and monopsony power. |
| Keywords: | Amenities, discrete choice, job postings |
| JEL: | J31 J32 J42 C83 C90 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26184 |
| By: | Baghai, Ramin; Silva, Rui; Soares, Margarida |
| Abstract: | Workers care deeply about job security and pay stability. Given potentially differing risk attitudes between men and women, we examine whether gender differences exist in employee exposure to idiosyncratic firm shocks. Using a comprehensive employer-employee matched dataset, we find significant gender disparities in how firm shocks affect workers: women's wages are 25% more elastic and their dismissal rates are 34% more sensitive to firm performance shocks than those of their male colleagues. These gender differences are larger for employees with children, in small firms, and in firms without female executives. Our results uncover a gender gap in firm insurance. |
| Keywords: | Labor and finance; Household finance; Gender gap |
| JEL: | G30 G52 J16 J28 J32 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19462 |
| By: | Picchio, Matteo; van Ours, Jan C. |
| Abstract: | High temperatures can have a negative effect on workplace safety for a variety of reasons. Discomfort and reduced concentration caused by heat can lead to workers making mistakes and injuring themselves. Discomfort can also be an incentive for workers to report an injury that they would not have reported in the absence of heat. We investigate how temperature affects injuries of professional tennis players in outdoor singles matches. We find that for men injury rates increase with ambient temperatures. For women, there is no effect of high temperatures on injuries. Among male tennis players, there is some heterogeneity in the temperature effects, which seem to be influenced by incentives. Specifically, when a male player is losing at the beginning of a crucial (second) fourth set in (best-of-three) best-of-five matches, the temperature effect is much larger than when he is winning. In best-of-five matches, which are more exhausting, this effect is age-dependent and stronger for older players. |
| Keywords: | Climate change; Temperature; Tennis; Injuries; Health |
| JEL: | J24 J61 Q51 Q54 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19428 |
| By: | Bastos, Paulo; Monteiro, Natalia P.; Straume, Odd Rune |
| Abstract: | We exploit gaps between observed and recently forecasted GDP growth in export destinations to estimate the effects of unexpected demand shocks on worker compensation. Using employer-employee panel data, we find that the revenues from these demand shocks are partly transmitted to workers in the form of higher average wages, especially close to the top of the within-firm wage distribution. These wage responses occur both in the form of higher overtime payment and base wage increases. We also find significant increases in bonus-related pay in firms managed by high-skilled managers, and the unequal average distribution of unexpected revenues is also mainly driven by wage effects in the same subset of firms. This suggests that the way in which revenues from unexpected demand shocks are transmitted to workers is significantly related to managerial capabilities. |
| JEL: | J2 J6 F16 F66 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19520 |
| By: | Fleck, Lara (ROA, Maastricht University); Becker, Dominik (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)); Fregin, Marie-Christine (ROA, Maastricht University); de Grip, Andries (ROA, Maastricht University); Pfeifer, Harald (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)); Weis, Kathrin (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)) |
| Abstract: | With the advent of generative artificial intelligence, prompting skills are becoming increasingly relevant in the workplace. Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), we asked decision-makers on hiring in German firms in all sectors of the economy are asked to choose between job applicants with different skills bundles. Applicant profiles vary in five attributes: prompting skills, occupation-specific skills gaps, social skills, gender and salary expectations. We find that prompting skills increase applicants’ hiring probability by 4 percent and employers are willing to pay 2 percent above the average salary of a skilled worker in their firm. This WTP is modest compared to the WTP for having matching occupation-specific skills or high social skills. However, in large firms as well as firms that have adopted or are planning to adopt AI, high prompting skills increase applicant’s hiring probability by 9 percent. Moreover, prompting skills have some leverage to balance out low to intermediate social skills. Yet, higher prompting skills do not compensate for occupation-specific skills gaps. Instead of such a compensatory effect, the demand for prompting skills seems to upgrade skills requirements in jobs. |
| Keywords: | prompting skills, generative AI, discrete choice experiment, willingness to pay, skills complementarities |
| JEL: | J23 J24 M51 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18871 |
| By: | Sam Hoey (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Thomas Peeters (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Stefan Szymanski (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | We study racial disparities in advancement to top management using the careers of 4, 770 former frontline workers from a prominent industry in England. Black workers are substantially less likely than non-Black workers to reach top managerial positions (11 versus 20 percent). We identify three sources of this gap: lower entry into management, lower promotion rates within management, and shorter tenure in senior managerial roles. Counterfactual simulations show that barriers to entering management explain most of the racial gap early in workers’ careers, while differences in promotion rates become the dominant driver later on. |
| Keywords: | racial discrimination, career progression, systemic discrimination, football managers |
| JEL: | J24 M50 M54 |
| Date: | 2026–08–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260053 |
| By: | Marco Caliendo; Katrin Huber; Ingo Isphording; Jakob Wegmann |
| Abstract: | We study the extent, correlates, and consequences of reporting bias in survey wages using German linked survey-administrative data (SOEP-CMI-ADIAB). Survey wages differ systematically from administrative records: mean survey wages are 7% lower, and discrepancies follow a mean-reverting pattern. Individual characteristics explain little of the reporting bias, whereas firm context explains most of the variation. Since neither data source alone is sufficient, we construct a hybrid wage that combines their respective strengths. Measurement choice matters, but in ways that depend on how administrative top-coding is handled across the full wage distribution: when wages are outcomes, censoring administrative wages at the assessment limit understates returns to education by 4-11% and the gender wage gap by up to 23%, while imputation reverses the bias for returns to education. When wages are regressors, wage-satisfaction gradients are 9-28% steeper with survey than with administrative wages below the assessment limit, a pattern inconsistent with classical attenuation bias and pointing to non-classical, context-dependent misreporting. We provide guidance for choosing between administrative, survey, and hybrid wages depending on the application, with lessons that extend to any setting where self-reported wages are collected alongside top-coded administrative records. |
| Keywords: | reporting bias, measurement error, wage, income, administrative data, survey data, data linkage |
| JEL: | J30 C81 D31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26193 |
| By: | Black, Ines; Figueiredo, Ana |
| Abstract: | We show that occupation mobility creates the illusion of cyclical hiring wages. Using administrative data, we find that wages of new hires who remain in the same occupation are no more cyclical than those of existing workers, whereas wages of occupation switchers are highly cyclical. We uncover higher wage cyclicality also among workers who switch occupations within the same firm. Moreover, wage cyclicality increases, the more different current and previous occupations’ required skills. Our results suggest that the widely documented cyclicality of entry wages reflects composition effects due to changes in match quality in worker’s occupation, rather than wage flexibility. |
| Keywords: | wage cyclicality; Occupation mobility |
| JEL: | J62 J31 E24 E32 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19430 |
| By: | Hattori, Keisuke |
| Abstract: | Organizations invest in cohesion so that team members care about one another's outcomes, yet such concern may affect not only how much members work but also what they work on. We study this distinction in a team-production model in which members allocate effort between safe routine work and risky experimentation. Each member values a teammate's payoff and is risk averse. Greater mutual concern raises the return to contributing to team output but magnifies the payoff risk that experimentation imposes on teammates even more. As a result, members work harder while experimenting less. Expected team output can fall even as total effort rises and can be U-shaped in the degree of mutual concern. Under a material-payoff criterion, the welfare-maximizing degree of mutual concern is generally interior. The same mechanism implies that larger teams can be more diligent yet less experimental when concern toward each teammate remains fixed. With heterogeneous exposure to team performance, more exposed members work harder but experiment less; when experimental authority must be concentrated in one member, assigning it to the less exposed member yields higher expected output. Finally, the core diligence--conservatism mechanism survives when experimental output is only partially shared across teammates, while differentiating experimental approaches encourages experimentation. Mutual concern therefore affects not only how hard team members work but also how they allocate initiative inside teams. |
| Keywords: | team production, other-regarding preferences, experimentation, risk taking, organizational design |
| JEL: | D23 D81 J24 M54 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:342603 |
| By: | Aaron Chatterji; David Holtz; Neel Rakholia; Prasanna Tambe; Gawesha Weeratunga |
| Abstract: | We study how organizations use frontier generative AI by linking ChatGPT Enterprise account records to usage, worker roles, task classifications, and public-company financial data through March 2026. These linked data enable a privacy-preserving analysis of adoption, worker roles, and message-level tasks at scale: for instance, the worker-level sample we analyze at the six-month adoption horizon includes over 1, 500 organizations and over 17 million messages. We document four facts about enterprise AI adoption and use. First, ChatGPT Enterprise usage has grown rapidly due to a combination of new firm adoption and growing intensity among existing adopters. Second, U.S.-based public company adoption is concentrated among larger, more valuable, and more R&D- and SG&A-intensive firms. Third, active use within adopting firms spans job functions and seniority levels, with especially high usage intensity among early-career workers. Fourth, ChatGPT Enterprise usage encompasses a broad range of knowledge work tasks, including writing, technical work, communication, and information synthesis. In aggregate, these results suggest that firms differ widely in the speed, breadth and purpose of their enterprise AI adoption, and that they are still actively learning how to integrate AI into organizational workflows. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.12236 |