We study the allocation and productivity consequences of training production line supervisors in soft skills via a randomized controlled trial. Consistent with standard practice for training investments within firms, we asked middle managers -- who sit above supervisors in the hierarchy -- to...

To improve public services, public sector managers must encourage reticent civil servants to enact effective reforms. We show through a randomized controlled trial that school principals, i.e., school mangers, can act as leaders to improve Instructional Management (0.3SD) and student learning...

We find widespread evidence of firms appearing to avoid paying overtime wages by exploiting a federal law that allows them to do so for employees termed as "managers" and paid a salary above a pre-defined dollar threshold. We show that listings for salaried positions with managerial titles...

We explore the economic effects of biodiversity loss by developing an ecologically-founded model that captures how different species interact to deliver the ecosystem services that complement other factors of economic production. Aggregate ecosystem services are produced by combining several...

Technology is the driver of labor allocation across sectors and occupations. Is the impact of technological change on developing countries similar to its impact on developed countries? Will developing countries follow the same development path that developed economies have taken? Our approach...

This paper studies how demand for labor reacts to financial technology (fintech) shocks based on comprehensive databases of fintech patents and firm job postings in the U.S. during the past decade. We first develop a measure of fintech exposure at the occupation level by intersecting the textual...

In spring 2005, Austria launched a campaign to inform employers and newspapers that gender preferences in job advertisements were illegal. At the time over 40% of openings on the nation's largest job-board specified a preferred gender. Over the next year the fraction fell to under 5%. We merge...

We use a unique corpus of job descriptions for C-suite positions to document skills requirements in top managerial occupations across a large sample of firms. A novel algorithm maps the text of each executive search into six separate skill clusters reflecting cognitive, interpersonal, and...

Why did the Black-White wage gap converge from 1960 to 1980 and why has it stagnated since? To answer this question, we introduce a unified model that integrates notions of both taste-based and statistical discrimination into a task-based model of occupational sorting. At the heart of our...

We construct new technology indicators using textual analysis of patent documents and occupation task descriptions that span almost two centuries (1850-2010). At the industry level, improvements in technology are associated with higher labor productivity but a decline in the labor share....