Publications

Purchase

January 2020
Article

Rethinking Measurement of Pay Disparity and Its Relation to Firm Performance

By: Ethan Rouen

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and... View Details

Keywords: Pay Disparity; Pay Ratio; CEO Pay Ratio; Income Inequality; Executive Compensation; Employees; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Business Ventures; Performance

November 2006
Case

Kroger Union Negotiations

By: Dennis A. Yao

A stylized version of the negotiations between Kroger Company and its local unions during the mid-1980s. Management faces a sequence of individual negotiations with local unions during a time of weak economic performance when management is seriously considering... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Wages; Management; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics

Educators

01 Dec 2016
News

How DC is Taxing the Country

in three years, with firms less able to compete in the global marketplace, pay employees higher wages and benefits, or both. A turnaround would require a national economic strategy—and that would require a functional political system, the... View Details

Keywords: Francis Storrs

Article

Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers

By: Benjamin Edelman

I analyze all questions and answers from the inception of the Google Answers service through November 2003, and I find notable trends in answerer behavior: more experienced answerers provide answers with the characteristics askers most value, receiving higher ratings... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Opportunities; Behavior; Value; Jobs and Positions; Wages; Business Earnings

Web

Timeline - Race, Gender & Equity

Philadelphia printers conduct first successful strike for increased wages 1787 United States Constitution adopted 1790 William Pollard is issued the first patent for a machine that roves and spins cotton 1794 Eli Whitney patents gin that... View Details

Web

The Ownership Project | Institute for Business in Global Society

Christopher Eaglin Videos Play Video duration: 1:31 The wealth gap: Rethinking equity ownership in modern business. Harvard Business School professor Ethan Rouen explains how the evolution of ownership structures - particularly the growing disparity between equity... View Details

28 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 28, 2008

Monetary Economics (forthcoming) Abstract Has greater turbulence among firms fueled rising wage instability in the U.S.? Gottschalk and Moffitt [1994] find that rising earnings instability was responsible for one-third to one-half of the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

21 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 21, 2018

issues far more seriously, before a point of no return was reached. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54864 Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit By: Luca, Dara Lee, and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

01 Jun 2024
News

Research Brief: Ahead of the Game

As a lifelong runner who spent countless hours training and competing his way up to the national level, Professor Paul Gompers has always believed that his athletic experiences were critical to shaping who he is, both as a competitor and in the professional sphere. Now... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; illustration by Antonio Pinna

November 11, 2022
Editorial

Finally Companies Have to Be Upfront about Job Pay Ranges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The significance of pay transparency laws is their role in moving American workplaces away from bias and closer to equal opportunity. View Details

Keywords: Pay; Salary; Pay Gap; Transparency; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Equality and Inequality

29 Jul 2021
News

Support System

for-profit B2C company that offers fair wages and provides education and retirement funds to its 7,500 registered pickers in the region. She later launched Mother’s Shea. As they have landed in retailers like Anthropologie, Credo Beauty,... View Details

01 Jun 1998
News

Katharine Graham Offers Advice on Leadership

company I cared desperately about," Graham noted. "I had participated, at least by osmosis, in the long struggle my father and my husband had waged to make the Post a success. But I was a long way from becoming an effective executive and... View Details

November 1994
Case

Navistar International

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Jeremy Cott

As a consequence of laying off half its workforce in a massive downsizing program, the company--a large manufacturer of medium and heavy trucks--struggles with a huge ($2.6 billion) liability for retiree medical costs. Although the company has promised its retirees... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Wages; Labor Unions; Legal Liability; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Restructuring

Educators

Purchase

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

Web

2019 Symposium - Race, Gender & Equity

Counternormative Identity within Your Own Community” at the 2019 Gender and Work Symposium. Elise Jones, Doctoral Candidate at Boston College, presents the Flash Talk “Constructing a Counternormative Identity within Your Own Community” at the 2019 Gender and Work... View Details

2025
Working Paper

The Hidden Costs of Flexible Labor Models: How Working Multiple Jobs Affects Employees

By: Paige Tsai and Ryan W. Buell

As operations increasingly rely upon flexible labor models—such as gig, part-time, and remote work—it has become commonplace for individuals to work multiple jobs. Across three studies, relying on a combination of transaction-level data from 90,548 customers of a... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Operations; Employee Behavior; Job Design; Sustainable Operations; Job Design and Levels; Personal Finance; Well-being; Happiness; Satisfaction; Wages

SSRN

December 2021
Article

Employee Responses to Compensation Changes: Evidence from a Sales Firm

By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton

What are the long-term consequences of compensation changes? Using data from an inbound sales call center, we study employee responses to a compensation change that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker. The change caused a significant... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Change; Performance; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Analysis