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- March 2024
- Module Note
Module Note on the Structuring of Collaborative Work
By: Ethan Bernstein
This module note for instructors describes the organizational structure module of the Managing Human Capital course that integrates insights from research on workplace connectivity (who gets to communicate with whom) and workplace transparency (who gets to observe... View Details
- March 2024
- Article
Do Safety Management System Standards Indicate Safer Operations? Evidence from the OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Standard
By: Kala Viswanathan, Matthew S. Johnson and Michael W. Toffel
Problem definition: Given the enormous disruptions and costs of occupational injuries, companies and buyers are increasingly looking to voluntary occupational health and safety standards to improve worker safety. Yet because these standards only require... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Exports in Disguise? Trade Rerouting During the U.S.-China Trade War
By: Ebehi Iyoha, Edmund Malesky, Jaya Wen and Sung-Ju Wu
This paper introduces a new measure of tariff evasion through rerouting and applies it to the
2018 U.S.–China trade war, focusing on Vietnam as a transit country. We use transaction-level trade data and define rerouting as the flow of a granular eight-digit Harmonized... View Details
- March 2024
- Article
Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups
By: Shai Bernstein, Richard Townsend and Ting Xu
Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals’ job search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even... View Details
- March 2024
- Article
Human Capital Affects Religious Identity: Causal Evidence from Kenya
By: Livia Alfonsi, Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová and Edward Miguel
We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over 20 years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
'De Gustibus' and Disputes about Reference Dependence
By: Thomas Graeber, Pol Campos-Mercade, Lorenz Goette, Alexandre Kellogg and Charles Sprenger
Existing tests of reference-dependent preferences assume universal loss aversion. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in gain-loss attitudes for such tests. In experiments on labor supply and exchange behavior we measure gain-loss attitudes and then... 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
- 2024
- Working Paper
Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups
By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein
How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth?
To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS
hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details
- December 2023 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Generative AI and the Future of Work
By: Christopher Stanton, Matt Higgins, Shira Aronson and Meg Shriber
Generative AI seemed poised to reshape the world of work, including the higher-wage, white-collar jobs typically pursued by MBA graduates. Informed by the latest research, this case explores generative AI's potential impacts on work, productivity, value creation, and... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Rapport in Organizations: Evidence from Fast Food
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Parker Howell, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Common identity often provides a foundation for workplace rapport. Though gender is perhaps the most frequently studied dimension of identity among workers, little is known about how gender match between managers and their workers might affect team performance. Using... View Details
- December 2023 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Yellow Corporation: On the Verge of Bankruptcy
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer
Yellow Corporation, one of the country’s oldest and largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, was nearing its 100th anniversary in 2024. Whether it would reach that milestone, however, was uncertain as the company was attempting to restructure its operations to... View Details
- December 4, 2023
- Comment
The Great Resignation, Employment, and Wages in Health Care
By: Amitabh Chandra and Louis-Jonas Heizlsperger
Notwithstanding concerns about staffing levels and burnout in health care, federal wage and employment data does not support the suggestion that a COVID-19 pandemic-related spike in quitting has had an enduring impact for hospitals or physician offices. Employment in... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Market Design and Maintenance
By: Alvin E. Roth
Because no marketplace operates in isolation from the larger world, marketplace designs may need to adapt to changes in the larger environments. I discuss such changes in connection with the labor markets for new doctors, new Ph.D. economists, and for kidney exchange... View Details
Keywords: Market Design
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Impact of Unionization on Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality: Evidence from Starbucks
By: Isamar Troncoso, Minkyung Kim, Ishita Chakraborty and SooHyun Kim
The US has seen a rise in union movements, but their effects on service industry marketing outcomes like customer satisfaction and perceptions of service quality remain understudied. In this paper, we empirically study the impact on customer satisfaction and... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Swanson Health: Becoming a Super Seller
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and Paige Boehmcke
Founded in 1969, Swanson Health sold vitamins, supplements, natural health products, and organic foods. Over the years, the company had successfully navigated multiple industry transitions as it expanded from a print catalog to sell products on its own... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Background Note
Talent Incubator Rankings
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
In 2023, The Official Board surveyed 853 executives on the topic of talent incubators/academy companies. Executives were asked to list the top three academy companies within their function, industry, and country. They were also asked: what practices differentiate these... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
UST's Adoption of Open Talent
By: Christopher Stanton and Kristen Senz
This case details the 2020 launch and subsequent scaling of UST’s Open Talent initiative, a program to integrate freelancers from digital platforms into its workforce. The case highlights how the shifting post-pandemic world, including layoffs, wage inflation, and... View Details
- 2023
- White Paper
Delivering on the Degree: The College to Jobs Playbook
By: David Deming, Joseph B. Fuller, Rachel Lipson, Kerry McKittrick, Ali Epstein and Emma Catalfamo
- November–December 2023
- Article
Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets
By: Isamar Troncoso and Lan Luo
Profile pictures are a key component of many freelancing platforms, a design choice that can impact hiring and matching outcomes. In this paper, we examine how appearance-based perceptions of a freelancer’s fit for the job (i.e., whether a freelancer "looks the part"... View Details