Investment fund managers make asset allocation decisions on behalf of a significant segment of US households. To elucidate the incentives they operate under, as well as the income and career risks they face, we construct a unique and novel dataset, which encompasses detailed information on the...

We use the labor market for doctorates in the biomedical sciences, where career dislocation is common, as a case study of skill-task mismatch and its consequences. Using longitudinal, worker-level data on biomedical doctorates, we investigate mismatch as an explanation for the negative pecuniary...

Pay secrecy is often justified on the ground of concerns about the detrimental consequences of intra-firm pay comparisons for work morale and performance. Surprisingly, however, there is only limited empirical evidence that the availability of pay comparison information is detrimental for effort...

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts...

This study uses a three-person gift-exchange game experiment to examine the impact of pay comparisons on effort behavior. We compare effort choices made in a treatment where workers' wages are secret with effort choices made in two 'public wages' treatments. The two 'public wages' treatments...

This paper investigates how social comparison information about referent others (i.e. learning what similar others do and how they are treated) affects reciprocal relationships. Using a three-person gift-exchange game we study how employees' reciprocity towards an employer is affected by...

We investigate the effects of pay comparison information (i.e. information about what co-workers earn) and effort comparison information (information about how co-workers perform) in experimental firms composed of one employer and two employees. Exposure to pay comparison information in...

Since the global financial crisis, US wage growth has been sluggish. Drawing on individual earnings data from the 2000-15 Current Population Survey, I find that the drawn-out cyclical labor market repair - likely owing to low entry wages of new workers - slowed down real wage growth. There are,...

The paper uses a large survey (GSOEP) to analyze the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It finds that new immigrant workers earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries,...

We evaluate empirically the impact of the dramatic 1991 trade liberalization in India on the industry wage structure. The empirical strategy uses variation in industry wage premiums and trade policy across industries and over time. In contrast to earlier studies on developing countries, we find...