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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
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Issue of 2026–05–04
seventeen papers chosen by Patrick Kampkötter, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen |
| By: | Michele Belot; Rustam Hakimov |
| Abstract: | We design an intervention to foster social ties at work and evaluate its impact on performance and retention. We run a cluster-randomized field experiment in a large microfinance firm, providing small subsidies for geographically spread offices to organize biweekly social activities over three months. The intervention increases perceived collegiality and workplace friendships by about 0.2-0.25 SD. Individual productivity is unchanged, but office-level team performance in the firm's competition improves in the final intervention month and employee turnover falls by about 4-4.5 pp from a 9-13% baseline in the following months. The pattern is consistent with bonding mitigating free-riding in team tasks and raising job utility as a non-wage amenity; survey evidence suggests an additional role for reciprocity toward the firm. |
| Keywords: | Workplace Collegiality, Climate, Bonding, Field Experiment |
| JEL: | M54 J32 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26033 |
| By: | Antoine Bertheau; Christian Hoeck |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on why similar workers receive different pay by linking administrative data to a large-scale, representative survey of Danish firms. We find that about 18 percent of firms hold inaccurate beliefs about their position in the wage distribution, with such misperceptions more common in smaller firms. Survey responses reveal that, by far, the primary motive for setting high wages is to retain and attract employees, consistent with wage-posting models. Differences in firm amenities, both positive and negative, also help explain pay variation across firms. |
| Keywords: | Wage dispersion; firm information frictions, biased beliefs |
| JEL: | J01 J31 J42 D83 M52 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25133 |
| By: | Ben Weidmann; Joseph Vecci; Farah Said; Sonia Bhalotra; Achyuta Adhvaryu; Anant Nyshadham; Jorge Tamayo; David Deming |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces and validates a novel approach to measuring management skills. In a large pre-registered lab experiment we causally identify managerial contributions by randomly assigning managers to multiple teams and controlling for differences in individual skill. We find that manager contributions matter greatly for team success, and that people who want to be in charge perform worse than randomly assigned managers. Managerial performance is strongly predicted by economic decision-making skill, but not by demographic characteristics. LinkedIn data show that participants who succeed in the lab are substantially more likely to receive real-world promotions. We also measure the skills of store managers in a large retail firm and find that they predict store sales and other correlates of productivity, which aligns with our experimental results. A one standard deviation increase in manager quality increases annual per-store sales by $4.1 million USD (25% increase). Selecting managers on skills rather than demographic characteristics or the desire to lead could substantially improve organizational performance. |
| Keywords: | Management, teamwork, skills, measurement, experiment |
| JEL: | M54 J24 C90 C92 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2591 |
| By: | Michael Amior; Shmuel San |
| Abstract: | Firms face significant constraints in their ability to differentiate pay by worker productivity. We show how these internal equity constraints generate a quantity-quality trade-off in hiring: firms which offer higher wages attract higher skilled workers, but cannot profitably employ lower skilled workers. In equilibrium, this results in workplace segregation and pay dispersion even among ex-ante identical firms. Our framework provides a novel interpretation of the (empirically successful) log additive AKM wage model, and shows how log additivity can be reconciled with sorting of high-skilled workers to high-paying firms. It can also rationalize a hump-shaped relationship between firm size and firm pay, and provides new insights into aggregate-level, regional and sectoral variation in earnings inequality-which we explore using Israeli administrative data. |
| Keywords: | Wage-setting, monopsony, internal pay equity, workplace segregation, firm size |
| JEL: | J31 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26052 |
| By: | Virginia Minni; Kieu-Trang Nguyen; Heather Sarsons; Carla Srebot |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how managers' gender attitudes shape workplace culture and gender inequality. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we leverage cross-country manager rotations to identify the effects of male managers' gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes reduce the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), largely through higher promotion rates for women. These effects persist after managers rotate out and are strongest in more conservative countries. Managers with progressive attitudes also influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture. |
| Keywords: | managers, gender gaps, corporate culture, multinationals |
| JEL: | J16 J24 F23 M14 M5 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26040 |
| By: | Shuo Zhang; Peter Kuhn |
| Abstract: | We use an algorithm audit of China's four largest job boards to measure the causal effect of a job seeker's gender on the jobs that are recommended to them, and to identify the algorithmic processes that generate those recommendations. Focusing on identical male and female worker profiles seeking jobs in the same industry-occupation cell, we find precisely estimated but modest amounts of gender bias: Jobs recommended to women pay 0.2 percent less, request 0.9 percent less experience, come from smaller firms, and contain .07 standard deviations more stereotypically female content such as requests for patience, carefulness, and beauty. The dominant driver of these gender gaps is content-based matching between posted job ads and the declared gender in new workers' resumes. 'Action-based' mechanisms -based on a worker's own actions or recruiters' reactions to their resume- contribute relatively little to the gaps we measure. |
| Keywords: | Recommender System, Algorithm, Gender, Job Platform |
| JEL: | C93 J71 J16 O33 M50 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25108 |
| By: | Sydnee Caldwell; Ingrid Haegele; Jörg Heining |
| Abstract: | We use novel surveys of firms and workers, linked to administrative employer-employee data, to study the prevalence and importance of individual bargaining in wage determination. We show that simple survey questions accurately elicit firms' bargaining strategies. Using the elicited strategies for 772 German firms, we document that the majority of firms are willing to engage in individual wage bargaining. Labor market factors predict firms' strategies better than firm characteristics. Survey responses from nearly 10, 000 full-time workers indicate that most workers provide their salary expectations before they receive a job offer. Most outside offers are rejected, with the worker remaining at the incumbent firm. There is substantial heterogeneity in workers' bargaining behavior, which translates into within-firm wage inequality. Firms that set pay via individual bargaining have a 3 percentage point higher gender wage gap. |
| Keywords: | wage-setting, bargaining |
| JEL: | J30 J31 J42 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2599 |
| By: | Petter Lundborg; Johan Vikström; Negar Khaliliaraghi |
| Abstract: | Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender differences in productivity and pay without confounding from task or client allocation. Using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service between 2003 and 2014, we exploit a rotation scheme that quasi-randomly assigns job seekers to employment caseworkers. This ensures male and female caseworkers are matched with comparable clients. We find productivity differences are small: job seekers assigned to female and male caseworkers exit unemployment at similar rates, with no evidence of job-quality differences. Consistent with this, hourly wages-conditional on productivity-are nearly identical across genders. Despite this, female caseworkers earn about 8 percent less per year, due to differences in contracted and actual hours worked. We also find suggestive evidence that male caseworkers are more likely to be promoted than equally productive female colleagues. Overall, when tasks are standardized and performance is measured objectively, gender differences in productivity and hourly pay are minimal, while gaps in annual earnings and career progression persist. |
| Keywords: | Gender Gaps, Productivity, Wages, Task Allocation |
| JEL: | D84 I12 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26028 |
| By: | Jakob Beuschlein; Jósef Sigurdsson; Horng Chern Wong |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of corporate acquisitions on workers using Swedish administrative data and document substantial, persistent earnings losses following acquisitions. These losses reflect both displacement and wage cuts among stayers from target firms. We find no evidence that increased monopsony power accounts for these wage cuts. Instead, they are concentrated in acquisitions where the acquiring-firm CEO sat on the board of the target prior to the transaction. Such acquisitions increase acquiring-firm profits and CEO pay, without affecting total employment or revenue, consistent with rent redistribution. Overall, acquisitions reduce wages and disrupt employment, with profit gains partly extracted from workers. |
| Keywords: | Mergers and acquisitions, wages, layoffs, monopsony, firm performance, managers |
| JEL: | G34 J23 J31 J42 J63 L25 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2576 |
| By: | Alan Benson; Louis-Pierre Lepage |
| Abstract: | Using administrative records from a large national US retailer, we find that managers learn to discriminate "on the job" as they hire workers of different races. We find that idiosyncratic negative and positive experiences of managers influence the race of their future hires. Early negative experiences hiring black workers yield particularly substantial and persistent declines in the manager's subsequent black hiring. Our results highlight that individual labor market experiences of employers with minority workers systematically give rise to hiring discrimination, consistent with past experiences dynamically shaping employer perceptions of worker groups. |
| Keywords: | Labor market discrimination; managers; experience effects; racial inequality |
| JEL: | J71 M50 D83 J24 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25116 |
| By: | Giuseppe Pulito; Mariola Pytlikova; Sarah Schroeder; Magnus Lodefalk |
| Abstract: | Using two waves of nationally representative Danish firm surveys linked to employer– employee administrative registers, we study how adoption varies across artificial intelligence (AI) and related advanced technologies. We show that AI adoption is highly technologyspecific. While firm size and digital infrastructure predict adoption broadly, workforce composition operates through distinct channels: STEM-educated workforces predict core AI adoption, whereas non-STEM university-educated workforces are associated with generative AI adoption, indicating different human capital complementarities. The factors associated with adoption differ from those predicting deployment breadth: firm size and digital maturity matter for both, whereas workforce composition primarily predicts adoption alone. Machine learning and natural language processing are deployed across multiple business functions, whereas other advanced technologies remain concentrated in specific operational domains. Individual-level evidence provides a foundation for these patterns, with awareness of workplace AI usage concentrated among managers and high-skilled workers. Self-reported AI knowledge is higher among younger and more educated individuals. Finally, commonly used occupational AI exposure measures vary substantially in their ability to predict observed adoption, with benchmark-based measures outperforming patent-based and LLM-focused alternatives. These findings show that treating AI as a monolithic category obscures economically meaningful variation in who adopts, what they deploy, and how well existing measures capture it. |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence; Technology Adoption; Digitalisation; Human capital; AI Exposure Measures |
| JEL: | D24 J23 J62 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp818 |
| By: | Giorgio Brunello; Caroline Neuber-Pohl |
| Abstract: | Using matched employer-employee data for Germany, we estimate firm production functions augmented with workers' personality traits. We find that emotional stability is the only trait that positively affects firm productivity. Its effect shows up mainly in large firms operating with a higher than median share of educated workers. |
| Keywords: | personality traits, firm productivity |
| JEL: | J24 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26025 |
| By: | Francesco Del Prato; Salvatore Lattanzio |
| Abstract: | Men experience workplace injuries at roughly twice the rate of women. We study whether compensating differentials for injury risk contribute to gender differences in firm pay policies. We develop a search model that microfounds an AKM wage equation, decomposing firm pay effects into productivity and injury-risk components. Using Italian matched employer-employee data with individual injury records, we estimate gender-specific firm wage effects and firm-level injury risk. We find that injury-related channels account for 8 percent of the gender gap in firm wage effects, rising to 17 percent in manufacturing. While women receive only 86 percent of men's wage response to firm-level injury risk, conditioning on broad occupation eliminates this within-firm disparity. This indicates that the injury channel reflects sorting across firms and occupational allocation within firms, rather than differential pricing of identical risk. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, workplace injuries, compensating differentials, AKM, rent sharing |
| JEL: | J16 J28 J31 J64 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26081 |
| By: | Natalia Emanuel; Emma Harrington; Amanda Pallais |
| Abstract: | How does proximity to coworkers affect training and productivity? We study software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm from 2019 to 2024. We leverage two shocks to colocation: (i) the office closures in 2020 and (ii) the subsequent return-to-office mandates. In both cases, co-located teams experienced bigger changes in proximity than distributed ones, facilitating difference-in-differences designs. We find that sitting near teammates increases coding feedback by 18.3% and improves code quality. Gains are concentrated among less-tenured and younger employees, who are building human capital. However, there is a tradeoff: experienced engineers write less code when sitting near colleagues. In national US data, we find suggestive evidence that the rise of remote work has had scarring effects on young college graduates: in remotable jobs, their unemployment rate has remained elevated relative to older graduates', a pattern not seen in non-remotable jobs. |
| Keywords: | Remote work, on-the-job training, firm-specific human capital, general human capital, return to office, telecommunication, gender |
| JEL: | J24 M15 M53 M54 J16 O33 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25164 |
| By: | Adriana Di Liberto; Ludovica Giua; Fabiano Schivardi; Marco Sideri; Giovanni Sulis |
| Abstract: | We study how managerial practices of school principals affect student performance and aspirations. For 2011 and 2015, we merge administrative data on Italian high school students with the management quality indices of their principals, constructed using the World Management Survey methodology. The frequent principals' turnover over this period allows us to causally interpret school-fixed-effect estimates. We find that management quality positively and substantially impacts standardized math and language tests and student desire to attend college. The comparison to pooled-OLS suggests that fixed effects correct for the downward bias arising from selection of better principals into more difficult schools. |
| Keywords: | Management; School principals; Student outcomes |
| JEL: | L2 I2 M1 O32 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25121 |
| By: | Michele Belot; Xiaoying Liu; Vaios Triantafyllou |
| Abstract: | This paper provides novel evidence on the key drivers of job satisfaction. We ask individuals to describe, in their own words, what they like and dislike about their jobs. These open-ended questions allow us to capture what comes to mind most naturally. We analyze the resulting free-text responses using GPT-4 to identify and classify categories of job amenities. Our main study draws on a sample of 500 full-time U.S.-based employees aged 30 to 55. We find that flexible work arrangements, workplace relationships, and autonomy consistently rank among the most valued aspects of work, while poor workplace relationships, long work hours, and heavy workloads dominate the list of dislikes and rank above factors such as pay. Our approach offers a fresh lens on what job amenities workers are most satisfied and dissatisfied with. |
| Keywords: | Job amenities, Large Language Models, GPT, Job satisfaction |
| JEL: | J28 J33 C88 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26026 |
| By: | Peter Fredriksson; Dogan Gülümser; Lena Hensvik |
| Abstract: | We show that the wages of men and women are differentially affected by outside options, and that these differential responses contribute to the gender pay gap. We develop a simple model of on-the-job search that integrates two crucial gender differences: job preferences and the propensity to renegotiate wages in response to external offers. Both factors contribute to lower wage responsiveness for women when they receive outside offers, and a negative female-male pay gap. However, women's job mobility responses vary depending on the underlying mechanism. To empirically test our model's predictions, we analyze wage and job mobility responses of men and women to external job opportunities, mediated through family networks. Using Swedish register data, we find that improved outside options are associated with higher within-job wage growth for men but not for women. Importantly, we can rule out that these gendered responses arise from differences in the quality of external offers as these are balanced across genders by design. Additionally, men's and women's job mobility responses are very similar. In the light of the model, we attribute these findings to differences in negotiation behavior between men and women. Policies encouraging women to bargain in response to outside options may thus be a powerful tool for reducing the remaining within-job gender gap in pay. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, outside options, wage bargaining, on-the-job search |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J62 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2571 |