Personnel economics drills deeply into the firm to study human resource management practices like compensation, hiring practices, training, and teamwork. Many questions are asked. Why should pay vary across workers within firms--and how quot;compressedquot; should pay be within firms? Should...

Venture capitalists add value to portfolio firms by obtaining and transferring information about senior managers across firms over time. Information transfer occurs on a significant scale and takes place both among a single venture capitalist%u2019s portfolio firms and between different venture...

Although economic models of training decisions are framed in terms of a company's calculation of the costs and benefits of such training, empirical work has never been able to test this model directly on company behavior. This paper utilizes a unique database to analyze the determinants of the...

Increasingly, firms are considering the adoption of new work practices, such as problem-solving teams, enhanced communication with workers, employment security, flexibility in job assignments, training workers for multiple jobs, and greater reliance on incentive pay. This paper provides...

Many researchers in both economics departments and business schools recently have become interested in examining how much of an effect human resource decisions and policies have on firm performance. This paper surveys the literature on unionism and productivity and discusses its implications for...

We investigate the relationship of quot;shared capitalistquot; compensation systems - profit/gainsharing, employee ownership, and stock options - to the culture for innovation and employees' ability and willingness to engage in innovative activity. Using a large dataset with over 25,000 employee...

We examine the effects of selected human resource management decisions on the abnormal change in total shareholder return. Announcements of human resource decisions are classified into five types--general HR system announcements, compensation and benefits, staffing, shutdowns and relocations,...

In this review of the personnel economics literature, we introduce key topics of personnel economics, focus on some relatively new findings that have emerged since prior reviews of some or all of the personnel economics literature, and suggest open questions in personnel economics where future...

Firms rarely cut compensation, so little is known about the after-effects when compensation reductions do occur. We use commission reductions at a sales firm to estimate how work effort and turnover change. In response to an 18% decline in sales commissions, corresponding to a 7% decline in...

How much do a manager's interpersonal skills with subordinates, which we call people management skills, affect employee outcomes? Are managers rewarded for having such skills? Using personnel data from a large, high-tech firm, we show that survey-measured people management skills have a strong...