Publications

August 2023
Article

What About the Race Between Technology and Education in the Global South? Comparing Skill-premiums in Colonial Africa and Asia

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg

Historical research on the race between education and technology has focused on the West but barely touched upon ‘the rest’. A new occupational wage database for 50 African and Asian economies allows us to compare long-run patterns in skill premiums across the colonial... View Details

Keywords: Skill Premium; Human Capital; Wages; History; Education; Africa; Asia

02 Feb 2012
Op-Ed

Once a Castle, Home is Now a Debtors’ Prison

live shackled in what the Chinese call fang nu—slaves to their house. One owner's misery is personal; when over a fifth of mortgage-holders are shackled, the personal misery becomes national. For the country, these homes are an economic shackle, hobbling the housing... View Details

Keywords: by Nicolas P. Retsinas; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

22 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

Earth Day: Recent Research on Sustainability

Regulatory Regimes: How States, Civil Society, and Codes of Conduct Promote Adherence to Global Labor StandardsResponding to regulatory and public pressure, many companies asked their suppliers to adhere to codes of conduct governing... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Generative AI and the Nature of Work

By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details

Keywords: Generative Ai; Digital Work; Open Source Software; Knowledge Economy; AI and Machine Learning; Open Source Distribution; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Labor

SSRN

March 2020
Article

Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation

By: Vikas A. Aggarwal, David H. Hsu and Andy Wu

How should firms organize their pool of inventive human capital for firm-level innovation? While access to diverse knowledge may aid knowledge recombination, which can facilitate innovation, prior literature has focused primarily on one way of achieving that: diversity... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Recombination; Organization Design; Team Boundary; Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Diversity; Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Human Capital; Organizational Design

September 2012
Article

Food Choices of Minority and Low-Income Employees: A Cafeteria Intervention

By: Douglas E. Levy, Jason Riis, Lillian M. Sonnenberg, Susan J. Barraclough and Anne N. Thorndike

Background: Effective strategies are needed to address obesity, particularly among minority and low-income individuals.

Purpose: To test whether a two-phase point-of-purchase intervention improved food choices across racial, socioeconomic (job... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Safety; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Cost

20 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 20

analyses of all bank acquisitions in the U.S. from 1990 to 2000 largely support these hypotheses. Read the paper: http://www.people.hbs.edu/cmarquis/Marquis_Guthrie_Almandoz_State_Activism-2011.pdf The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

What's the Ideal Frequency for a Sales Quota?

More frequent quotas can motivate underperforming sales reps. StockPhoto Personal selling is a key ingredient in making the American economy go. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 10 percent of the View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

1979
Book

Life in Organizations: Workplaces as People Experience Them

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and B. A. Stein

Keywords: Working Conditions

February 24, 1997
Article

A Better Way to Go on Strike

By: James K. Sebenius and David Lax

Keywords: Labor; Disruption

September 1980 (Revised April 1984)
Background Note

Note on Japanese Management and Employment Systems

By: Michael Beer

Keywords: Management; Employment

August 1994 (Revised June 1995)
Background Note

Managerial Effectiveness and Diversity: Organizational Choices

Defines "diversity" in organizational terms and provides a descriptive framework for understanding the ways organizations identify and respond to its challenges and opportunities. The four components or lenses of the framework are: motivators, mindset, methods,... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Organizations; Labor; Diversity Characteristics

Educators

06 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

What the World Could Learn from America's Immigration Backlash—100 Years Ago

immigrants might increase labor market competition for native-born workers, lowering their wages and their employment prospects. Cultural. Immigration is associated with the influx of people with different traditions, races, religions,... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Tabellini

09 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

These Employers Pay Higher Salaries than Necessary

Imagine you walk into a shop where you don’t know the prices. Maybe it’s a Turkish souk, redolent with smells of saffron and turmeric. Or maybe it’s a New Hampshire antique store, full of dusty shelves of enticing oddities. You pick out your silk scarf or ceramic... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Employment; Technology; Computer

August 2009
Teaching Note

Mina O'Reilly at Logan Airport's TSA (TN)

By: Michel Anteby and Erin McFee

Teaching Note for [409116]. View Details

Keywords: Safety; Labor; Employees; Behavior; Decisions; Air Transportation Industry; Boston

2009
Working Paper

Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation

By: Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver

Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms... View Details

Keywords: Labor; Marketplace Matching; Quality; Competition; Balance and Stability

September 1998 (Revised November 1998)
Case

STRIVE

STRIVE provides employment training and placement to chronically unemployed inner-city minority youth and young adults. This case describes STRIVE's creation as a community-based, single-site nonprofit in Harlem in 1984; the development of its service model (short,... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Growth Management; Employment; Training; Employment Industry

Educators

Forthcoming
Article

Loss of Peers and Individual Worker Performance: Evidence From H-1B Visa Denials

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Kirk Doran, Astrid Marinoni and Chungeun Yoon

We study how restrictive immigration policies that result in the unexpected loss of co-workers affect the performance of skilled migrants employed in organizations. Specifically, we examine the impact of the loss of team members on their co-workers’ performance in... View Details

Keywords: Immigration; Performance Productivity; Employees; Human Capital; Ethnicity; Groups and Teams

January 2021
Article

State and Local Government Employment in the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Daniel Green and Erik Loualiche

Local governments are facing large losses in revenues and increased expenditures because of the COVID-19 crisis. We document a causal relationship between fiscal pressures induced by COVID-19 and the layoffs of state and local government workers. States that depend... View Details

Keywords: Local Government; Municipal Finance; Public Finance; Fiscal Capacity; Fiscal Policy; Governance; Local Range; Health Pandemics; Employment; Finance; Policy; Public Sector