Research Question/Issue: Do large, within-firm executive pay differences hurt firm performance? Prior literature shows mixed results concerning the sign of the relationship between executive pay disparity and firm performance. This study evaluates that literature, clarifies what tournament...

I estimate a structural model of teams, autonomy, and financial performance, using a cross section of British establishments. My findings suggest that team production improves financial performance for the typical establishment but that autonomous teams do no better than closely supervised or...

Using data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) employer survey, we document a new empirical finding that workers are less likely to receive promotions in nonprofit organizations than in for-profit firms. Among other results, we also show that: wage increases associated with...

A large literature suggests that incentive pay and delegation of worker authority are positively related. Using data from a large cross section of British establishments, we show that the positive relationship found in the empirical literature masks a stark difference across jobs. Classifying...

Using a large sample of establishments drawn from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) employer survey, we study gender differences in promotion rates and in the wage gains attached to promotions. Several unique features of our data distinguish our analysis from the previous...

The results in this paper suggest, among other things, a strong association between recruitment choices and starting wages. The theoretical framework motivating the empirical analysis is a wage-posting game in which firms make wage offers and choose recruitment strategies while recognizing a...

We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to...

Surveying employment-related newspaper advertisements over several centuries, we identify four eras (neither workers nor firms posted ads, mostly workers posted, mostly firms posted, both parties posted). These eras correspond to alternative equilibria in a strategic coordination game describing...