|
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Ina Ganguli; Martina Viarengo; Ricardo Hausmann (Center for International Development at Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. We observe significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of gender gaps in promotions and wages, but the gaps that exist appear to be declining over the period studied. We also observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement. Finally, we show that various measures of national institutions and culture appear to play a role in the differential labor-market outcomes of men and women. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps; human capital; job mobility; promotion; culture; legal sector |
| JEL: | I26 J16 J62 M51 Z |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:378&r=all |
| By: | Marvin Deversi; Martin G. Kocher; Christiane Schwieren |
| Abstract: | We analyze cooperation within a company setting in order to study the relationship between cooperative attitudes and financial as well as non-financial rewards. In total, 910 employees of a large software company participate in an incentivized online experiment. We observe high levels of cooperation and the typical conditional contribution patterns in a modified public goods game. When linking experiment and company record data, we observe that cooperative attitudes of employees do not pay off in terms of financial rewards within the company. Rather, cooperative employees receive non-financial benefits such as recognition or friendship as the main reward medium. In contrast to most studies in the experimental laboratory, sustained levels of cooperation in our company setting relate to non-financial values of cooperation rather than solely to financial incentives. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, social dilemma, field experiment, company |
| JEL: | C93 D23 H41 J31 J32 M52 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8190&r=all |
| By: | Margaretha Buurman; Josse Delfgaauw; Robert Dur; Robin Zoutenbier |
| Abstract: | We ran a field experiment at a large Dutch school for intermediate vocational education to examine whether the response of teachers to student feedback depends on the content of the feedback. Students evaluated all teachers, but only a randomly selected group of teachers received feedback. Additionally, we asked all teachers before as well as a year after the experiment to assess their own performance on the same items. We find a precisely estimated zero average treatment effect of receiving student feedback on student evaluation scores a year later. However, teachers whose self-assessment before the experiment is much more positive than their students. evaluations do improve significantly in response to receiving feedback. We also find that pro-vision of feedback reduces the gap between teachers. self-assessment and students. assessment, but only to a limited extent. All of these results are driven by the female teachers in our sample; male teachers appear to be unresponsive to student feedback. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, feedback, teachers, student evaluations, self-assessment, gender differences |
| JEL: | C93 I20 M50 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8209&r=all |
| By: | Achyuta Adhvaryu; Vittorio Bassi; Anant Nyshadham; Jorge A. Tamayo |
| Abstract: | How do firms pair workers with managers, and which constraints affect the allocation of labor within the firm? We characterize the sorting pattern of managers to workers in a large readymade garment manufacturer in India, and then explore potential drivers of the observed allocation. Workers in this firm are organized into production lines, each supervised by a manager. We exploit the high degree of worker mobility across lines, together with worker-level productivity data, to estimate the sorting of workers to managers. We find negative assortative matching (NAM) -that is, better managers tend to match with worse workers, and vice versa. This stands in contrast to our estimates of the production technology, which reveal that if the firm were to positively sort, productivity would increase by 1 to 4 percent across the six factories in our data. Coupling these findings with a survey of managers and with data on multinational brands and the orders they place, we document that NAM arises, at least in part, because the value of buyer relationships imposes minimum productivity constraints on each production line. Our results emphasize that suppliers to the global market, when they are beholden to a small set of powerful buyers, may be driven to allocate managerial skill to service these relationships, even at the expense of productivity. |
| JEL: | J24 L14 L23 M5 |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27006&r=all |
| By: | Doligalski, Pawel; Werquin, Nicolas; Ndiaye, Abdoulaye |
| Abstract: | Half of the jobs in the U.S. feature pay-for-performance. We study nonlinear income taxation in a model where such contracts arise in private labor markets that are constrained by moral hazard frictions. We derive novel formulas for the incidence of arbitrarily nonlinear reforms of any given tax code on both the mean of earnings and their sensitivity to performance. We show theoretically and quantitatively that, follow- ing an increase in tax progressivity, the higher performance-sensitivity caused by the crowding-out of insurance provided by firms is almost fully offset by a countervailing performance-pay effect driven by labor supply responses. As a result, earnings risk is hardly affected by policy. We then turn to the normative analysis of a government that levies taxes and transfers to redistribute income across workers with different levels of uninsurable productivity. We find that setting taxes without accounting for the endogeneity of private insurance is close to optimal. Thus, the common concern that standard models of taxation underestimate the cost of redistribution is, in the context of performance-based compensation, overblown. |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:124213&r=all |