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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Andy Chung (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Tin Cheuk Leung (Wake Forest University); James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | Digital platforms expose workers and managers to immediate, public, and persistent evaluations from external audiences, creating a form of social pressure that may shape workplace decisions. We examine whether such digital social pressure predicts subsequent opportunity allocation and worker performance, using professional football as a high-frequency empirical setting. We link player-match data from Europe’s five major leagues to post-match Twitter commentary and construct measures of negative sentiment, toxicity, and racial abuse. Comparing players with themselves over time and teammates in the same current match, we find that greater negative sentiment is associated with a lower probability of appearing in the team’s next match. Toxicity shows a similar but less stable association, while racial-abuse intensity is imprecisely estimated when the measures enter jointly. By contrast, associations with performance conditional on a subsequent appearance are small and imprecise. Overall, the findings suggest that digital social pressure is reflected more strongly in the allocation of subsequent opportunities than in worker performance, showing how public evaluations generated outside formal organizational boundaries can become part of the reputational environment surrounding internal managerial decisions. |
| Keywords: | digital social pressure, online criticism, managerial decision-making, worker performance, social media, professional football, racial abuse |
| JEL: | J24 M54 D91 Z22 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–09–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2026-10 |
| By: | Riccardo Di Francesco; Peter Hull; Seetha Menon |
| Abstract: | We study how firms’ orientation toward employee well-being shapes the health of their workers. Because this orientation is not directly observable, we measure it from the language Danish firms use in their public disclosures, applying language models to construct a firm-level well-being salience score. We link this score to population-wide administrative registers of health and sickness absence over 2013–2022, and exploit workers’ mobility between firms to estimate how workers respond to a change in the salience of their employer. We find an asymmetry: workers who move to higher-salience firms take substantially more sickness absence, while their use of health care does not change. Because worsening health would raise both, the absence response suggests a behavioral change rather than deteriorating health. Broadly, our results show that firms shape not only worker health but how workers act on it, and that the language of routine corporate disclosure can reveal economically meaningful features of the workplace that administrative data leave unrecorded. |
| JEL: | I12 J28 J32 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35760 |
| By: | Lepinteur, Anthony (University of Luxembourg); Nieto Castro, Adrian (Lund University) |
| Abstract: | We study whether pay timing shapes employment stability using staggered state reforms that allow employers to pay less frequently. Combining rich longitudinal labor-market records with multiple complementary data sources, we show that deregulation reduces pay frequency and produces a sharp but temporary increase in employment-to-unemployment transitions, concentrated among workers in the lowest prior-income quartile. The employment separations arise through layoffs, while quits remain unchanged. We provide detailed evidence on the mechanisms underlying this asymmetry. Less frequent pay tightens workers’ financial constraints, reduces their use of medical and professional services, worsens their health-care affordability and functional health, and lowers the time they spend working and interacting at work, thereby weakening employment relationships and contributing to employer-initiated separations. To explain the absence of quits, we examine responses on both sides of the labor market. Workers do not increase on-the-job search or interviewing, while employers neither compensate for less frequent pay by increasing earnings nor broadly reduce job openings. |
| Keywords: | pay frequency, payday regulation, unemployment transitions, layoffs, quits |
| JEL: | J33 J63 J64 D14 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18925 |
| By: | Rod Falvey (Bond University); Tom Lane (Newcastle University); Shravan Luckraz (University of Nottingham Ningbo China); Shuo Yang (University of Nottingham Ningbo China); Wanjun Zheng (Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper reexamines the Holmström’s moral hazard in teams for environments where team production problems are repeated a finite number of times. Motivated by the observation that many real-world team interactions are naturally repeated while much of the literature emphasizes static peer-evaluation rules or repeated-game constructions that rely on infinite horizons, we adapt a Galbraith Mechanism (GM)-style allocation mechanism to a finitely repeated principal–agent team production setting and evaluate its performance both analytically and in the laboratory. We construct a repeated GM allocation that mixes equal sharing with proportional rewards, characterize subgame-perfect equilibria that sustain higher aggregate effort than static equal-share benchmarks, and design credible finite-horizon history-dependent punishments to select efficient equilibria when multiplicity arises. A laboratory experiment on a twice-repeated game tests the mechanism’s static and dynamic predictions under alternative allocation treatments. Our results show that groups under the (repeated GM) proportional allocation exert significantly higher effort than under (one-shot GM) equal sharing, consistent with theoretical predictions. Observed behavior indicates increased cooperation with repeated interaction. |
| Keywords: | Team Production; Moral Hazard; Finitely Repeated Games; Galbraith Mechanism |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2026-05 |
| By: | Kauhanen, Antti (ETLA Economic Research); Riukula, Krista (ETLA Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether collective bargaining can reduce gender inequality through targeted wage increases. We examine the Finnish equality allowance, a small contractual wage component corresponding to a wage increase of up to 0.5 percent, introduced in the 2005 comprehensive agreement and implemented in collective agreements in 2006. Using worker-level earnings data linked to collective agreements, we estimate its effects with difference-in-differences methods robust to heterogeneous treatment effects. Equality allowances were more commonly applied in more female-dominated sectors and occupations. Our preferred analysis focuses on the private-sector agreements, where some agreements introduced an equality allowance and others did not. We find no statistically significant effects on hourly earnings, working hours, or employer mobility. However, subgroup analyses provide some evidence of reduced working hours among low-wage women. The findings suggest that a small equality-oriented wage component was insufficient to produce detectable wage gains for women or narrow the gender wage gap, with point estimates consistent with partial offsetting through other components of the contractual settlement. |
| Keywords: | collective bargaining, gender wage gap, equality allowance, targeted wage increases, Finland |
| JEL: | J52 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18932 |
| By: | Itai Ashlagi; Ramesh Johari; Jon Kleinberg; Anushka Murthy |
| Abstract: | AI-assisted job-search tools have become increasingly popular by making it easier to find and apply to jobs. But by making it easier for applicants to generate and tailor application materials, they can also reduce how informative those materials are about applicant fit. We study this tradeoff in a hiring market where applicants differ in experience and latent match quality and firms use noisy application materials to decide whom to screen. We ask how AI affects downstream screening and hiring, and which applicants are most adversely affected. As application materials become less informative, a Bayesian firm rationally relies more heavily on coarse observables such as prior experience. Among the four applicant types defined by experience and compatibility for the job, inexperienced-compatible applicants are the most exposed: they lack observable experience and lose the individualized information that could distinguish them from other inexperienced candidates. When screening is costly, these changes can also generate inefficient screening failures in which firms screen no applicants or screen only experienced applicants. We then show that multistage hiring can arise as an endogenous firm response: a relatively inexpensive intermediate assessment allows firms to acquire new evidence of fit before costly full screening. This can restore screening opportunities that disappear under one-stage hiring and give inexperienced-compatible applicants a path to screening. Our results show how AI can shift the central friction in hiring from submitting applications to obtaining credible evaluation, creating entry barriers for high-fit workers without prior experience. Multistage hiring can endogenously arise in response, restoring evaluation opportunities that would otherwise disappear and helping preserve market functioning. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.30058 |