Recipient of a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship in Economics.
Zoe B. Cullen
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Entrepreneurial Management
Zoe Cullen graduated with a PhD from Stanford in Economics in 2016. She worked from 2016-2018 as the Chief Economist for an Asian bank on the roll out of a digital transaction platform. In 2018 she joined HBS as an Assistant Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. Her interests are in the design of labor markets and the choices of employers and labor platforms that affect matters of public interest, such as pay transparency, pay inequality and criminal background screening. She’s an NBER Affiliate in Labor Studies, an Associate Editor at the Journal of Political Economy and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2024-2026).
- Journal Articles
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- Cullen, Zoë B., Shengwu Li, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "What's My Employee Worth? The Effects of Salary Benchmarking." Review of Economic Studies (forthcoming). View Details
- Bartik, Alexander W., Zoë Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher Stanton, and Adi Sunderam. "When Should Public Programs Be Privately Administered? Theory and Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program." Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming). View Details
- Bartik, Alexander, Zoë Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton. "The Rise of Remote Work: Evidence on Productivity and Preferences from Firm and Worker Surveys." Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (forthcoming). (Pre-published online October 24, 2024.) View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "Is Pay Transparency Good?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 38, no. 1 (Winter 2024): 153–180. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information." Art. 104890. Journal of Public Economics 222 (June 2023). View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B., and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson. "Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency." Econometrica 91, no. 3 (May 2023): 765–802. (Lead Article.) View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B., and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap." American Economic Review 113, no. 7 (July 2023): 1703–1740. (Lead Article.) View Details
- Cullen, Zoë, Will Dobbie, and Mitchell Hoffman. "Increasing the Demand for Workers with a Criminal Record." Quarterly Journal of Economics 138, no. 1 (February 2023): 103–150. View Details
- Balla-Elliott, Dylan, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton. "Determinants of Small Business Reopening Decisions After COVID Restrictions Were Lifted." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 41, no. 1 (Winter 2022): 278–317. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B., and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "How Much Does Your Boss Make? The Effects of Salary Comparisons." Journal of Political Economy 130, no. 3 (March 2022): 766–822. View Details
- Bartik, Alexander, Marianne Bertrand, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Outcomes and Expectations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 30 (July 28, 2020): 17656–66. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë, and Chiara Farronato. "Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms." Management Science 67, no. 7 (July 2021): 3985–4003. View Details
- Working Papers
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- Atkin, David, Zoë Cullen, and Ebehi Iyoha. "Navigating Choppy Waters: How U.S. Trade Policy Uncertainty Affects Small Businesses." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 25-048, April 2025. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B., Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?" NBER Working Paper Series, No. 33383, January 2025. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Cullen, Zoë B., Shikhar Ghosh, and Shweta Bagai. "Metaphysic AI: Rethinking the Value of Human Expertise." Harvard Business School Case 825-146, March 2025. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "The Spreadsheet." Harvard Business School PowerPoint Supplement 824-174, March 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "The Spreadsheet: Confidential Role for Ginny Dominguez." Harvard Business School Exercise 824-173, March 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "The Spreadsheet." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 824-168, March 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 824-166, February 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "The Spreadsheet: Confidential Role for Judy Lagrange." Harvard Business School Exercise 824-172, March 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes." Harvard Business School PowerPoint Supplement 824-170, February 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B. "Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes." Harvard Business School Case 824-078, February 2024. View Details
- Cullen, Zoë B., and Alexander J. MacKay. "The Spreadsheet." Harvard Business School Case 723-366, August 2022. View Details
- Bussgang, Jeffrey J., Zoë B. Cullen, William R. Kerr, Benjamin N. Roth, and Michael Norris. "A Close Shave at Squire." Harvard Business School Case 821-073, July 2021. View Details
- Awards & Honors
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Recipient of a 2023 National Science Foundation Research Grant ($368,490) for "What's My Employee Worth? Information Frictions, Pay, and Pay Equity" with Ricardo Perez-Truglia.Recipient of the 2021 Excellence in Refereeing Award from the American Economic Review.Winner of the 2019 Exemplary Applied Modeling Track Paper at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Economics and Computation for “Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency in a Simple Labor Market” with Bobak Pakzad-Hurson.
- Additional Information
- In The News