Stringent labor laws can provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing innovative activities. Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, we identify this effect by exploiting the time-series variation...

The unionized share of the work force changed markedly in the United Kingdom between the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s density rose steadily, making the United Kingdom the most heavily organized large OECD country. In the 1980s, by contrast, density fell by 1.4 percentage points per annum -- a...

British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine the effects of labor demand shocks on prosecutions....

One-fifth of U.S. high school students report being bullied each year. We use internet search data for real-time tracking of bullying patterns as COVID-19 disrupted in-person schooling. We first show that, prepandemic, internet searches contain useful information about actual bullying behavior....

The CDC reports that the association between bullying and suicides among teenagers has generated "concern, even panic," but polices aimed at combatting bullying have received little attention from researchers. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that state-level...

Workplace misbehaviors are often governed by explicit monitoring and strict punishment. Such enforcement activities can serve to lessen worker productivity and harm worker morale. We take a different approach to curbing worker misbehavior--bonuses. Examining more than 6500 donor phone calls...

Bullying is a behavioral phenomenon that has received increasing attention in recent times. This paper uses a structural model with latent skills and longitudinal information from Korean youths to identify the determinants and effects of bullying. We find that, unlike cognitive skills,...

We evaluate secure survey methods designed for the ongoing monitoring of harassment in organizations. We use the resulting data to answer policy relevant questions about the nature of harassment: How prevalent is it? What share of managers is responsible for the misbehavior? How isolated are its...

According to UNESCO, one-third of the world's youths are victims of bullying, which deteriorates academic performance and mental health, and increases suicide ideation and the risk of committing suicide. This paper analyzes a four-month parent-directed intervention designed to foster empathy in...

Using cross-sectional data files for the United States we show that difficulties experienced in childhood - so-called Adverse Child Experiences (ACE)s - are strongly and significantly associated with mental health in adulthood. Our evidence is taken from eight Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance...