Measuring workers’ productivity is important for public policy and private-sector decision-making. Due to a lack of reliable methods to determine workers’ productivity, firms often use specific performance measures, such as how different incentives affect employees’ behavior. The public...

Measuring workers' productivity is important for public policy and private-sector decision-making. Due to the lack of a general measure that captures workers' productivity, firms often use one- or multi-dimensional performance measures, which can be used, for example, to analyze how different...

It is not possible for a formal employment contract to detail everything an employee should do and when. Informal relationships, in particular trust, allow managers to arrange a business in a more productive way; high-trust firms are both more profitable and faster growing. For example, if they...

Economic theory has many predictions regarding how workers should be paid and how workplaces should be organized. However, economists’ attempts to test these in the real world have been hampered by a lack of consistent information about workers’ productivity levels. Professional sports offer...

Remote work and digital collaborations are prevalent in the business world and many employees use digital communication tools routinely in their jobs. Communication shifts from face-to-face meetings to asynchronous formats using text, audio, or video messages. This shift leads to a reduction of...

Governments invest a lot of money in education, so it is important to understand the benefits of this spending. One essential aspect is that education may make people better parents and thus improve the educational and employment outcomes of their children. Interventions that encourage the...

Restricting immigration to young and skilled immigrants using a point system, as in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, succeeds in selecting economically desirable immigrants and provides orderly management of population growth. But the point system cannot fix short-term skilled labor shortages...

The Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe—as well as one of the most disadvantaged. A triple vicious circle is at play: Substandard socio-economic outcomes reinforce each other; they fuel negative attitudes and perceptions, leading to ill-chosen policies; and segmentation is...

Are apprenticeships valuable for firms? Economists once thought that firms do not pay to develop occupational skills that workers could use in other, often competing, firms. Now, researchers recognize that most firms benefit from investing in apprenticeship training. Firms gain from the...

Mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America have been providing positive role models and building social skills for more than a century. However, most formal mentoring programs are relatively novel and researchers have only recently begun to rigorously evaluate their impact on...