Publications

Aug 2003
Article

The Economic Performance of Regions

This paper examines the basic facts about the regional economic performance, the composition of regional economies, and the role of clusters in the U.S. economy over period of 1990 to 2000. The performance of regional economies varies markedly in terms of wage, View Details

Article

Targeting Weather Insurance Markets

By: Anita Mukherjee, Shawn Cole and Jeremy Tobacman

The suitability of insurance products often depends greatly on individual circumstances. This paper examines the challenges of heterogeneity in a relatively new product, weather‐indexed insurance. This index insurance product has been launched in over a dozen... View Details

Keywords: Index Insurance; Labor Markets; Self-insurance; Self-protection; Weather; Insurance; Markets; Household; Risk Management

2008
Working Paper

A Replication Study of Alan Blinder's 'How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?'

By: Troy Smith and Jan W. Rivkin

In a 2007 working paper, Alan Blinder assessed the "offshorability" of hundreds of U.S. occupations and estimated that between 22% and 29% of all U.S. jobs were potentially offshorable. This note reports the results of an exercise in which members of Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Wages; Research; United States

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Article

Contested Meanings of Freedom: Workingmen's Wages, the Company Store System and the Godcharles v. Wigeman Decision

By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

In 1886, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited employers from paying wages in company store scrip and mandated monthly wage payments. The court held that the legislature could not prescribe mandatory wage contracts for legally competent... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Rights; Fairness; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Pennsylvania

June 2003 (Revised December 2003)
Case

Social Partnership

By: Huw Pill and Julian Coulter

Discusses the tripartite social partnership among employers, unions, and government that was geared toward maintaining international competitiveness through wage moderation within the European monetary system from the late 1980s. View Details

Keywords: Wages; Competition; Partners and Partnerships; Labor and Management Relations; Business and Government Relations; Europe

Educators

24 Mar 2017
HBS Seminar

Francine Blau, ILR School, Cornell University

17 Mar 2015
News

Laissez-faire fix to labour-market inequality?

2014
Working Paper

Pay Harmony: Peer Comparison and Executive Compensation

By: Claudine Gartenberg and Julie Wulf

This study suggests that peer comparison affects both wage setting and productivity within firms. We report three changes in division manager compensation following a 1991–1992 controversy over executive pay. We argue that this controversy increased wage comparisons... View Details

Keywords: Pay-for-Performance; Internal Labor Markets; Peer Comparison; Firm Geography; Behavior; Executive Compensation; Policy

SSRN

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03 Nov 2018
News

The path to economic development is growing more treacherous, again

07 Oct 2019
HBS Seminar

Tristan Botelho, Yale University

February 2003
Supplement

Steel Cash

By: William E. Fruhan Jr. and Katherine A. Codega

Spreadsheet to (9-203-042). Test the impact of changes in wage rates on the value of debt and equity securities. Download only. View Details

Keywords: Change; Equity; Debt Securities; Wages

We use data from a large web-based job platform to study how the price of remote work is determined in a globalized labor market. In the platform, workers located around the world compete for jobs that can be done... View Details

September 2016
Article

When 3+1>4: Gift Structure and Reciprocity in the Field

By: Duncan S. Gilchrist, Michael Luca and Deepak Malhotra

Do higher wages elicit reciprocity and lead to increased productivity? In a field experiment with 266 employees, we find that paying higher wages, per se, does not have a discernible effect on productivity (in a context with no future employment opportunities).... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Performance Productivity

In 1886, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited employers from paying wages in company store scrip and mandated monthly wage payments. The court held that the legislature could not pre-scribe mandatory wage contracts for legally competent... View Details

13 Feb 2014
HBS Seminar

David Moss, Harvard Business School

04 Mar 2015
What Do You Think?

Can a Laissez-Faire Approach Fix Labor Market Inequality?

regarding wages ." Gerald Nanninga concluded that, "The problem with universally mandated rules of business (be it wages, hours, or whatever) is that it limits strategic options At least with the laissez faire approach, there is... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

Pay Harmony: Peer Comparison and Executive Compensation

This study suggests that peer comparison affects both wage setting and productivity within firms. We report three changes in division manager compensation following a 1991-1992 controversy over executive pay. We argue that this... View Details

2021
Article

Cluster Presence and Economic Performance: A New Look Based on European Data

By: Christian H.M. Ketels and Sergiy Protsiv

This paper takes a fresh empirical look at how cluster presence matters for economic performance. It analyses a new data set developed for the European Cluster Observatory to assess the impact of clusters on industry-level wages and regional prosperity. It is found... View Details

Keywords: Cluster; Economic Geography; Prosperity; Economic Performance; Wages; Economy; Europe