Supervisors occupy central roles in production and performance monitoring. We study how heterogeneity in performance evaluations across supervisors affects employee and supervisor careers and firm outcomes using data on the performance system of a Scandinavian service sector firm. We show that...

This paper investigates employee performance appraisals using data from a single US firm between 2001 and 2007. We find that performance appraisals are both informative and drive important components of the employment contract. We find that employee appraisal scores vary considerably both...

The question of how entrepreneurship relates to income mobility is cogent given the current public debate about the sources of income inequality and mobility in United States society. We examine how experience with entrepreneurship has affected an individual's place in the earnings distribution....

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the...

Women enter retirement having spent fewer years in market work, earned less over their lifetimes, and worked in different jobs than men of the same age. This study examines whether these differences in work-life experiences help explain why many women end up with lower levels of retirement...

High school exit exams are meant to standardize the quality of public high schools and to ensure that students graduate with a set of basic skills and knowledge. Evidence suggests that a common perverse effect of exit exams is an increase in dropout for students who have difficulty passing...

Previous research has shown that women in the treatment group of the CeMENT randomized controlled trial increased their publications and the likelihood that they were tenured in top 50 economics departments. This paper examines one potential mechanism, namely, that CeMENT expanded the...

Machines increasingly replace people in routine job tasks. The remaining tasks require workers to make open-ended decisions and to have "soft" skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. This paper documents growing demand for decision-making and explores the consequences...