We compare the economic approach to research on personnel and organizational design to approaches from behavioral disciplines. Instead of a survey of the field, our emphasis is on topics which are important in organizational research outside of economics, yet have been little emphasized by...

This study analyzes trends in part-time employment in the United States for 1964-1993. The conventional wisdom holds that a permanent shift has occurred toward part-time employment--particularly involuntary part-time jobs--in recent years. The data show a cyclical increase during the latest...

This paper analyzes whether people who enter the labor market during economic downturns suffer a setback in their careers that can last indefinitely. I test whether recessions experienced in a person's state of birth between the ages of 16 and 25 have effects that persist at the individual level...

In this paper we study job design. Will an organization plan precisely how the job is to be done ex ante, or ask workers to determine the process as they go? We first model this decision and predict complementarity between these job attributes: multitasking, discretion, skills, and...

We study effects of a firm's attempt to optimize an existing incentive scheme to increase sales growth for direct store delivery workers. Before optimization workers reported Ratchet Effects that lowered productivity. The altered incentive plan offered higher compensation for increased sales...