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- 2025
- Working Paper
Pushing the Envelope: The Effects of Salary Negotiations
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
Salary negotiations are a widespread phenomenon that can shape key labor market outcomes, such as welfare and inequality. We provide novel empirical and theoretical insights into the causes and consequences of salary negotiations. We conducted two field experiments... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Navigating Choppy Waters: How U.S. Trade Policy Uncertainty Affects Small Businesses
By: David Atkin, Zoë Cullen and Ebehi Iyoha
This paper explores the impact of recent changes in the US trade policy environment
on small businesses. Drawing on a survey of more than 4,000 small businesses conducted
between March 22 and 31, 2025, we examine firms’ knowledge, expectations, and
decisions during... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Metaphysic AI: Rethinking the Value of Human Expertise
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In early 2025, Thomas Graham, CEO of Metaphysic, a leading AI generative video company confronted fundamental questions about who should control digital identity in a world where AI could perfectly recreate human likeness. Founded in 2021, Metaphysic first rose to fame... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
We estimate the value employees place on remote work using revealed preferences in a high-stakes, real-world context, focusing on U.S. tech workers. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles. Our estimates are three to... View Details
- February 2024
- Teaching Note
Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes
By: Zoë B. Cullen
- February 2024
- Supplement
Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes
By: Zoë B. Cullen
- February 2024
- Case
Levels.fyi: How Negotiations Coaching and Pay Transparency Change Job Market Outcomes
By: Zoë B. Cullen
Salary information is everywhere. What impact does it have on compensation? How should employees and employers use salary information in negotiations? This case brings to light how pay information affects behavior and job market outcomes in surprising ways. View Details
- Winter 2024
- Article
Is Pay Transparency Good?
By: Zoë B. Cullen
Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within a firm. While... View Details
- July 2023
- Article
The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about
family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees’ social interactions with their managers
can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the... View Details
- June 2023
- Article
The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information
By: Zoë Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
The limited diffusion of salary information has implications for labor markets, such as wage discrimination policies and collective bargaining. Access to salary information is believed to be limited and unequal, but there is little direct evidence on the sources of... View Details
- May 2023
- Article
Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson
The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek
to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting
and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details
Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Corporate Disclosure; Wages; Negotiation
- February 2023
- Article
Increasing the Demand for Workers with a Criminal Record
By: Zoë Cullen, Will Dobbie and Mitchell Hoffman
State and local policies increasingly restrict employers’ access to criminal records, but without
addressing the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks.
Employers may thus still want to ask about a job applicant’s criminal record... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
The Spreadsheet
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Alexander J. MacKay
Compensation is the largest expenditure of almost every venture. Getting compensation packages right affects talent acquisition, retention, and profitability. In this case, and accompanying negotiation exercise, students learn strategies and tactics for setting... View Details
- Winter 2022
- Article
Determinants of Small Business Reopening Decisions After COVID Restrictions Were Lifted
By: Dylan Balla-Elliott, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton
The COVID-19 pandemic led to dramatic economic disruptions, including government-imposed restrictions that temporarily shuttered millions of American businesses. We use a nation-wide survey of thousands of small business owners to establish three main facts about... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
How Much Does Your Boss Make? The Effects of Salary Comparisons
By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia
The vast majority of the pay inequality in an organization comes from differences in pay between employees and their bosses. But are employees aware of these pay disparities? Are employees demotivated by this inequality? To address these questions, we conducted a... View Details
Keywords: Salary; Inequality; Managers; Career Concerns; Pay Transparency; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Perception; Behavior
- January 2022 (Revised March 2024)
- Teaching Note
A Close Shave at Squire
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 821-073. View Details