We analyze equally competitive spouses competing for promotion in their respective workplaces and show that an asymmetric equilibrium featuring household specialization can arise. Examples where the asymmetric equilibrium is welfare-superior to the symmetric equilibrium are highlighted. By...

Firms increasingly delegate job screening to third-party recruiters, who must not only satisfy employers’ demand for different types of candidates, but also manage yield by anticipating candidates’ likelihood of accepting offers. We study how recruiters balance these objectives in a novel,...

Subjective performance evaluation is an important part of hiring and promotion decisions. We combine experiments with administrative data to understand what drives gender bias in such evaluations in the technology industry. Our results highlight the role of personal interaction. Leveraging...

This study investigates whether the success of salary history bans could be limited by job-seekers volunteering their salaries unprompted. We survey American workers in 2019 and 2021 about their recent job searches, distinguishing when candidates were asked about salary history from when they...

We study the market for CEOs of large publicly-traded US firms, analyze new CEOs' prior connections to the hiring firm, and explore how hiring choices are determined. Firms are hiring from a surprisingly small pool of candidates. More than 80% of new CEOs are insiders, defined as current or...

This study examines the causal influence of digital technologies, specifically operational (ODT) and information digital technologies (IDT), on firms’ employment structure using Italian firm-level data. It employs a unique empirical approach, constructing instrumental variables based on...

A body of literature suggests that ethnic heterogeneity limits economic growth. This paper provides microeconometric evidence on the direct effect of ethnic divisions on productivity. In team production at a plant in Kenya, an upstream worker supplies and distributes flowers to two downstream...

We use the German Job Vacancy Survey to investigate whether firms are able to attract more suitable applicants by offering bargain wages rather than posting fixed wages. Contrary to the theoretical predictions provided by the literature, we find that the offer to bargain over pay decreases the...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

We analyze the optimal contract between a risk-averse manager and the initial shareholders in a two-period model where the manager's investment effort, carried out in period 1, and her current effort, carried out in period 2, both impact the second-period profit, so that it may be difficult to...