In many professional service firms, new associates work long hours while competing in up-or-out promotion contests. Our model explores why these firms require young professionals to take on heavy work loads while simultaneously facing significant risks of dismissal. We argue that the...

Using Current Population Survey data, I demonstrate a 15-percentage point wage disadvantage among academics compared to all other doctorate-holders with the same demographics. Time-diary data show that academics' workhours are distributed more evenly over the week and day, although their total...

We measure the response of physicians to monetary incentives using matched administrative and time-use data on specialists from Québec (Canada). These physicians were paid fee-for-service contracts and supplied a number of different services. Our sample covers a period during which the Québec...

The COVID-19 pandemic created unexpected and prolonged disruptions to childcare access. Using survey evidence on time use by academic researchers before and after the pandemic, we analyze the extent to which greater access to either school-based or partner-provided childcare mitigated the severe...

A review of the basic theory of optimal open-source software contributions points to three keyfactors affecting supply: non-pecuniary benefits, future expected monetary returns, and opensourcelicence type...

We compare the returns to education (RTE) for entrepreneurs and employees, based on 19waves of the NLSY database. By using instrumental variable techniques (IV) and takingaccount of selectivity, we find that the RTE are significantly higher for entrepreneurs than foremployees (18.3 percent and...

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more...

Around 1870 the U.S. had no research universities of note, while today it accounts for the largest number in the world. Many accounts attribute this transformation to events surrounding World War II. In contrast, this paper traces its origins to reforms that began in the 1870s. We first explain...

We investigate whether commonly used value-added estimation strategies can produce accurate estimates of teacher effects. We estimate teacher effects in simulated student achievement data sets that mimic plausible types of student grouping and teacher assignment scenarios. No one method...

Product quality is often unobservable ex-ante and consumers rely on experts' judgments, sometimes in the form of ratings or awards. Do awards affect consumers' choices or, conversely, are they conferred on the most popular products? To disentangle this issue, we use data about the most important...