No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements
Abstract
We employ a discrete choice experiment in the employment process for a national call center to estimate the willingness to pay distribution for alternative work arrangements relative to traditional office positions. Most workers are not willing to pay for scheduling flexibility, though a tail of workers with high valuations allows for sizable compensating differentials. The average worker is willing to give up 20 percent of wages to avoid a schedule set by an employer on short notice, and 8 percent for the option to work from home. We also document that many job-seekers are inattentive, and we account for this in estimation.
... Another example is the hypothesis that gender differences exist in job preferences, with women placing relatively less value on pay compared to men while placing relatively more value on non-pay characteristics. This can lead to the sorting of women into jobs with lower pay (Card et al., 2015;Le Barbanchon et al., 2020;Mas and Pallais, 2017). ...
... Hotz et al. (2018) demonstrate that women tend to transition to more "family-friendly" jobs after becoming mothers. Mas and Pallais (2017) observe that women are more willing to pay for job attitudes that prioritize family-friendliness. Pertold-Gebicka et al. (2016) find that women more frequently shift from private sector jobs with time pressure and long working hours to public sector positions. ...
This paper offers a novel theoretical explanation for the gender gap in job satisfaction, where women typically report higher job satisfaction than men. We argue that rational family decisions can result in divergent job choices for women and men, leading to increased job satisfaction but lower earnings for women, even when their preferences and expectations align with those of men. We develop this explanation within a theoretical model of family household decision-making that considers relative earnings disparities within households. We provide empirical evidence supporting our model's predictions utilizing survey and administrative data from Canada.
... Companies are increasingly leveraging data-driven tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and social media platforms like LinkedIn to identify and reach out to potential candidates who may not be actively seeking new opportunities but possess the skills needed for high-demand roles. According to a study by Mas & Pallais (2017) [48], reverse placement strategies are particularly effective in the recruitment of passive candidates-those who are not actively searching for jobs but may be open to better opportunities. These candidates are often more desirable because they are employed and bring a proven track record of success in their current roles. ...
... Companies are increasingly leveraging data-driven tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and social media platforms like LinkedIn to identify and reach out to potential candidates who may not be actively seeking new opportunities but possess the skills needed for high-demand roles. According to a study by Mas & Pallais (2017) [48], reverse placement strategies are particularly effective in the recruitment of passive candidates-those who are not actively searching for jobs but may be open to better opportunities. These candidates are often more desirable because they are employed and bring a proven track record of success in their current roles. ...
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore and propose an innovative approach to MBA curriculum design by integrating a reverse placement model, where corporate invitations for executive roles are secured through enhanced experiential learning strategies. By analyzing and identifying alternative strategies that can be embedded into the MBA curriculum, this research aims to provide insights into how these approaches can bridge the gap between academic learning and corporate leadership opportunities, thereby offering MBA graduates a competitive edge in securing executive positions.
Methodology: Exploratory research method is used to collect, analyse, and suggest a new model of reverse placement to secure executive roles through corporate invitation. The information is collected from websites, Google search, Google Scholar search, and AI-driven GPTs using appropriate keywords and analysed using research skills such as analysis, comparison, evaluation, and interpretation to create new knowledge.
Results/Analysis: An alternative strategy that can be incorporated into MBA curriculum design to enhance experiential learning and how this alternative strategy of increasing innovativeness of MBA graduates can lead to reverse placements, i.e., corporate invitations for executive roles. Additionally, the study assessed the effectiveness of the proposed model through stakeholder analysis using the ABCD framework. The concept of reverse placement, driven by alternative strategies like industry analysis, company analysis, CEO analysis, and business plan development, provides MBA graduates with a competitive advantage. By integrating these strategies into the MBA curriculum, students create a compelling personal brand and expertise portfolio that attracts corporations seeking forward-thinking talent. This leads to corporate invitations, offering graduates unique and high-value job placements without the need for traditional job applications.
... • Equal Pay Initiatives: Governments should enforce policies ensuring equal pay for equal work, reducing financial vulnerabilities for women (Goldin, 2014). • Flexible Work Arrangements: Recognising the dual roles many women play (work and home), offering flexible work arrangements can help them balance both effectively (Mas & Pallais, 2017). • Localised Solutions for Global Problems: • Cultural Sensitivity: Financial behaviours and decisions are often rooted in local cultures and beliefs. ...
This chapter underscores the critical role of financial literacy, especially for entrepreneurs, in today's rapidly changing economic landscape. The significance of this subject is evident, yet recent studies from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Standard & Poor's (S&P) reveal an alarming deficiency in financial knowledge, with a vast number of adults, including budding entrepreneurs, unable to understand fundamental financial concepts. This was particularly evident during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This knowledge gap affects not just individual entrepreneurs but can also pose systemic risks, especially with emergent challenges like the introduction of digital assets. Our chapter takes a holistic view, exploring topics from entrepreneurial financial planning to the socio-economic factors influencing financial choices. Highlighting gender disparities in financial literacy, we emphasise the urgent need for a gender-inclusive approach to financial education. This approach ensures both individual entrepreneurial success and collective resilience against economic adversities.
... Consequently, the expected coefficient associated with C k is positive, signifying that individuals demand additional wage premiums, or compensating wage differentials, to accept jobs with less than optimal working conditions. This also reflects the economic weight individuals place on favorable working conditions, evidenced by their capacity to tolerate specific compromises in the presence of perceived deficiencies of working conditions, subsequently seeking compensation through wage premium (Mas and Pallais, 2017). Coefficient of C k is also dubbed the "implicit/ shadow price." ...
Desirable working conditions such as geographic accessibilities attached to the job are important amenities for individuals to maximize their occupational utility, and the absence of comfortable working conditions should be equally and adequately compensated. The “compensating wage differential” hypothesis subsumed by hedonic wage theory offers us the theoretical framework to interpret the relationship between individuals’ earnings and job dis(amenities). In the teacher labor market, job disamenities such as the undesirable geographic location of schools should be compensated to balance the spatial distribution of teachers. The authors tested this idea by employing a unique self-collected dataset, sourced from a representative developing region in southern China. The results showed that teachers’ earnings were positively associated with the geographical unpopularity attached to the rural school where they worked, holding other factors constant. In addition, the result yielded by instrumental variable identification strategy confirmed that teachers’ positive self-selection into rural schools had led to an underestimation of the adverse impact of geographic ruralness on their utility losses. This paper sheds light on how to staff schools located in geographically disadvantaged areas with quality teachers by properly offering economic incentives.
... It is directly linked to poverty wage employment and perceived income inadequacy (Allan et al., 2021). Researchers from disciplines such as management and psychology have investigated different indicators of precarity from work (see Caza et al., 2022;Cropanzano et al., 2023), whereas research from the field of economics has investigated closely related topics (Adermon & Hensvik, 2022;Chen et al., 2019;Cook et al., 2021;Mas & Pallais, 2017;Vyas, 2021), which are linked to objective criteria that can be classified as antecedents of precarity from work (cf. sub-chapter 'The objective perspective: Gig work as a precarious type of work'). ...
... For example, in Norway, mothers are more likely to change occupations and employers compared to women without children, and women who make such changes as a result of having a child are likely to switch into lower-paying jobs (Lundborg et al. 2017). This indicates that women may switch into jobs where they sacrifice higher wages for child-friendly benefits such as flexibility or shorter commute (Mas andPallais 2017, Bertrand 2020). ...
... Thus, for some employees, non-traditional work hours are preferred in circumstances involving care work at home. However, a majority of workers do not voluntarily choose to work in jobs with non-traditional work times (Kim, 2022;Mas & Pallais, 2017). For this reason, in this section as well as in the discussion of results, we consider non-traditional work times to be unfavorable. ...
Employees’ lives are structured by when and how much they work, which we refer to as “work temporality.” While Latinos, the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the U.S. labor force, are disproportionately employed in jobs with unpredictable work schedules, it is unclear how their time at work, broadly defined, varies within this group. This study addresses this gap by examining the temporal dimensions of work among Latinos in the U.S. by nativity and citizenship status and compares them to native-born White and Black workers. We analyze a range of detailed measures that capture the multidimensional nature of work temporality: duration (weekly hours), variability (changes in weekly hours), and timing (evening/night shifts, early/late weekday schedule, weekend work), in addition to conventional measures of non-standard work schedules. We estimate these conventional and detailed measures for five race/ethnicity/nativity/citizenship groups using the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 2014 to 2021. We assess whether these observed differences are maintained after controlling for compositional differences in demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic characteristics. The results indicate that relying wholly on conventional indicators can underestimate Latinos’ exposure to non-traditional work schedules, particularly for female Latino non-citizens. Instead, considering the temporal dimensions of duration, variability, and timing in concert may be more informative. The findings contribute to our understanding of how Latinos’ time at work is organized, and the stratifying roles of gender, nativity, and citizenship in the U.S. labor market.
... Economists frame this as a hedonic model of compensation to predict that workers trade pay for positive job attributes such as flexible hours and comfortable working conditions, which in turn informs the amount of pay that firms can offer to attract the workers it desires (Lazear & Shaw, 2007: 102). Experimental findings estimates the average hourly wage worker is willing to accept an eight percent lower wage for the option to work from home (Mas & Pallais, 2017). Similarly, a field study shows existing employees contribute more effort for the same pay when provided a less restrictive remote work policy (Choudhury et al., 2021). ...
The affordable housing crisis is a quintessential wicked social problem. Lower wage workers in particular are increasingly priced out of desired locations and essential workers such as teachers, police and healthcare providers often struggle to live within the very communities they serve. We investigate the role of remote work in this multi-faceted problem, leveraging multi-year data derived for the United States to examine a path in which remote work opportunities skew to higher wage workers who commonly use their geographic flexibility to relocate to more affordable locales. We probe how this form of residential sorting among higher wage workers creates both positive and negative externalities in relation to home prices, focusing most closely on the social cost borne by lower wage workers and the role of organizations through the lens of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our research broadens the social role for organizations in the domain of affordable housing and, critically, specifies theoretical logic that extends CSR to the contemporary landscape of remote work and its resulting spatial interdependencies that render responsibility well beyond traditional geographic boundaries.
... Der Befund verdeutlicht, dass Frauen die Hauptverantwortung für die Kinderbetreuung tragen, sodass Erwerbsarbeit für sie zur Herausforderung wird. So belegen zahlreiche Studien, dass Frauen flexible Arbeitsplätze bevorzugen und eine ausgeprägte Abneigung gegenüber langen Arbeitswegen haben (Goldin, 2014;Le Barbanchon et al., 2021;Black et al., 2014;Liu & Su, 2024;Mas & Pallais, 2017;Nagler et al., 2024). Letztlich sind Frauen häufig bereit dafür auf Lohn, Arbeitsstunden oder gar komplett auf eine Erwerbstätigkeit zu verzichten. ...
This article discusses what we know about the impact of working from home (WFH) on gender inequalities in the labour market and unpaid care work. While the literature provides evidence that remote work can promote women’s labour force participation and re¬duce wage inequalities, the impact on gender gaps in care work remains largely unclear. A major limitation is that findings from periods before the big shift to remote work induced by COVID-19 cannot easily be applied to “new” WFH arrangements today.
... find that some remote workers earned wage premia, while mothers, who often report their willingness to accept lower wages for remote jobs in experimental studies, paid a wage penalty (He et al. 2021;Maestas et al. 2023;Mas and Pallais 2017;Nagler et al. 2024). 1 While before the pandemic working from home was a matter of choice, during the pandemic, it was imposed on many workers and employers as a health safety measure. Thus, at least at the start of the pandemic, both workers and employers did not choose to work from home based on their relative productivity differences. ...
Remote work gradually increased in the United States during the four decades prior to the pandemic, then surged in 2020. Using the American Community Survey, we show that pre-pandemic, remote full-time white-collar workers earned a wage premium while blue-collar workers paid a wage penalty compared with on-site workers. In 2020–2021, remote workers in most occupations earned a wage premium. Although average wages grew only slightly faster from 2019 to 2021 for remote workers than for on-site workers within occupations, increases in remote work intensity within occupations were positively associated with occupation-level wage growth. Pre-pandemic, remote employees worked substantially longer hours per week than on-site workers, but by 2021 their hours were similar.
... By investigating how the relationship between a longer residual working horizon and sick leaves varies with firm wage premia, our paper also contributes to the literature on time flexibility and gender wage gaps (see Bertrand et al. 2010;Goldin 2014;Goldin and Katz 2016). Mas and Pallais (2017), for instance, show that females value schedule regularity and flexibility more than males. Bolotnyy and Emanuel (2022), using administrative data on bus and train operators, argue that the gender gap in earnings can be explained by the fact that females are both less likely than males to accept working longer hours and more likely to take unpaid time off. ...
Using matched employer-employee data for Italy and newly available information on sick leave certificates, we study the effect of an exogenous increase in the length of the residual work horizon—triggered by a pension reform that increased minimum retirement age—on middle-aged employees’ absence from work due to sick leaves. We find that this effect is positive for females and negative for males. We explain these results by arguing that the intertemporal substitution of leisure prevailed over the fear of job loss for females, while the opposite happened to males. Sick leaves increased only for females working in firms that pay smaller wage premia to female workers than to males, suggesting that, in these firms, females exchange lower pay for higher flexibility in their work schedule.
... The flexibility and autonomy of freelancing come with certain trade-offs (MoldStud, n.d.). While freelancers may enjoy a better work-life balance, the nature of their work can be "irregular," with unpredictable schedules and the need to be "on-call" during evenings, nights, and weekends (Mas & Pallais, 2017). The project-based nature of freelance work means that freelancers cannot rely on a constant flow of income, unlike their full-time employee counterparts who can anticipate regular paychecks with certainty (Mai, 2020). ...
High-quality freelance media professionals are currently in high demand and stand for years to come. The difficulties faced by media professionals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to new job openings where innovation can freely express itself in the marketplace. Media professionals have never had a better chance to operate autonomously as independent contractors, freely supplying the market with their creative talents. Even if there were freelancing jobs before the COVID-19 outbreak, the confining scenario has created many new self-employment opportunities. With more independent workers emerging every year, freelancing has become a global trend. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its unique approach, is no exception to this global trend. The government is consistently paving new paths for independents, and networks of these entities are expanding both nationally and internationally, making the UAE a fascinating case study in the world of freelancing. This study employs a qualitative research approach, focusing on policy analysis. This paper's primary data sources are government policies, laws, regulations, and reports that address various aspects of freelancing within the media sector in the UAE. These sources are gathered from governmental sites, legal databases, and associated publications. By exploring the UAE's government policy, laws, and regulations on the freelance workforce, the advantages and disadvantages of freelancing, and the future of freelance media workers in the UAE, this research determines the present and future states of freelance media workers in the UAE.
... This general conclusion aligns with recent findings from a 6-month intervention study that introduced two home-office days per week; compared to the control group working fully onsite this led to improved job satisfaction and lower turnover intent with equal levels of productivity up to two years later (Bloom et al., 2024). Indeed, the possibility of remote work is valued like a pay raise of 8% (Mas & Pallais, 2017), which highlights that remote work is generally considered a privilege. ...
The aging workforce and the rise of remote (including hybrid) work are reshaping the future of work. However, the intersection of remote work and aging has been underexplored compared to other flexible work arrangements. We synthesize evidence on the largely separate literatures on workforce aging and remote work to investigate how employee age may impact (1) remote work use and intensity and (2) experiences and outcomes of remote work. Our analysis suggests that contrary to a modern-work-is-young stereotype, older workers are equally well, if not better, adapted in remote work settings due to age-related strengths in self-regulation, motivation, and social connectedness. They may manage increased autonomy more effectively and experience less social isolation and fewer challenges with blurred work-nonwork boundaries compared to younger workers. Additionally, remote work can mitigate health challenges in older workers and extend productive working years, creating value at individual, organizational, and societal levels. Organizations must counter stereotypes about older workers and provide ergonomic support and training to maximize these benefits. 3
... These findings help explain the pecuniary value workers seemingly attach to geographic flexibility. For instance, research suggests workers are willing to trade off 8 % of pay on average for the option to work remotely (Mas and Pallais 2017) and shows that existing work-from-home employees contributed more effort for the same pay after opting into a new work-from-anywhere policy (Choudhury, Foroughi, and Larson 2021). Moreover, my framework offers implications for organizational research and practice regarding the form and the degree of geographic flexibility, looking beyond remote work as a blanket concept. ...
Geographic flexibility among workers to choose where they live rather than remain tethered to a specific physical office has emerged as a valued workplace benefit. Even before the prevalence of remote and distributed work, in‐demand skilled workers were known to weigh desirable aspects of locales over pay. However, the COVID‐19 pandemic elevated geographic choice to a broader role in workers' lives and the future of work. This study examines how workers derive utility from geographic flexibility and corresponding implications for organizations. I consider both instrumental and symbolic manifestations of utility, including but going beyond pragmatic motives for relocating, such as economic benefits and proximity to family, to encompass the less understood function of place as a target of identification. Findings are derived through an abductive qualitative analysis of 1300 personal narratives on chosen or desired moves at a time of geographic flexibility. Overall this work substantiates four distinct forms of personal utility offered by geographic flexibility—wanderlust, economic, affiliation, and self‐fulfillment—and clarifies identity mechanisms that underlie the place (dis)identification process to advance theorizing. Implications for organizational research and practice are discussed.
To create sustainable and inclusive gig economy ecosystems, fair labor practices, income instability, and gig worker social protection must be addressed. The Gulf Cooperation Council gig economy has pros and cons. GCC nations may profit from gig economy job creation and economic development by using technology and legislative changes. However, gig workers must be protected while fostering flexibility. Some experts discuss that gig economy has its own pitfalls. It may hinder the development of full timers’ employees as gig employee are cheaper and more adaptable. On the other hand, the rights of gig workers economy are debatable since permanent jobs normally provide health insurances and other benefits. In this paper we try to explore how this is operating in the GCC. The gig economy in the GCC and emphasizes the need for comprehensive plans that account for regional dynamics to maximize advantages and minimize risks. Besides, surveying other countries experiences reflects on how to assess the development of GCC experience.
Purpose
The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of the cultural backgrounds of foreign science and engineering (S&E) students on their preference for various attributes of their future job.
Design/methodology/approach
We use a unique discrete-choice experiment fielded among M.Sc students of the two largest Dutch technical universities. Building on Hofstede’s (2001) national culture dimensions, we estimate mixed rank-ordered logit regressions that relate international students’ cultural distance to the Netherlands to their preferences for job autonomy and teamwork in their future jobs.
Findings
We find that students who come from cultures characterized by a higher power distance and lower individualism have a lower preference for jobs with higher levels of autonomy, whereas those from cultures characterized by higher masculinity have a lower preference for jobs requiring working in teams.
Practical implications
Our findings challenge the HR practices of high-tech companies, which production processes require high degrees of worker autonomy and teamwork, aiming to mitigate their severe skill shortages by recruiting foreign S&E graduates with different cultural backgrounds. These companies should improve their attractiveness to applicants from cultures characterized by high power distance, low individualism and/or high masculinity by offering compensating wage incentives or emphasizing their supervision and training to bridge cultural distances in the workplace and the career opportunities they offer new hires.
Social implications
Implementing courses aiming to develop teamwork skills as well as workshops that enable students to work equitably in diverse teams in engineering studies could also be a tool to reduce barriers to teamwork for international students as well as other underrepresented groups.
Originality/value
The paper is the first study that shows the different job preferences of foreign S&E students related to their cultural backgrounds.
Examining couples as joint decision makers offers valuable insights into gender disparities, yet the literature has largely overlooked the transition to a key alternative work arrangement: self-employment. Using couple-matched data from the 2015–2024 Current Population Survey, the author investigates how the collective decisions of couples are linked to the shift toward self-employment and how these patterns are moderated by parenthood and occupational characteristics. The author finds that wives are more likely to move from wage employment to self-employment if their husbands work long hours. Although this tendency is not moderated by parenthood, the association between husbands’ long hours on encouraging wives’ self-employment is stronger when wives are in occupations with strong overwork norms. This work underscores the option of self-employment for women when the demand for flexibility is heightened because of partners’ long work hours while the potential supply for flexibility is limited because of occupational norms.
This study investigates whether (and how) working from home (WFH) affects the gender division of parental unpaid labor. I use the recent COVID-19 pandemic that brought an unanticipated yet lasting shift to WFH combined with a measure of occupational WFH feasibility (Alipour et al. 2023) as a quasi-experiment to employ an instrumental variable (IV) approach and estimate causal effects. I use unique longitudinal data from the "Growing up in Germany" (AID:A) panel study, which administered a prepandemic wave in 2019, and a post-pandemic wave in 2023. AID:A contains rich information on mothers' and fathers' time use for work, commuting, childcare, and housework. I find that the most robust effects emerge for paternal WFH intensity (at least weekly WFH) on parental division of housework: families in which fathers start weekly WFH in the period 2019 to 2023-due to their occupational WFH capacity in combination with the pandemic WFH-boost-experience a significant decrease in the maternal share of parental housework. Interestingly, this shift appears to be mainly driven by a reduction of maternal time use for housework (combined with an increase of her work hours) and less by an increase in paternal time use for housework suggesting crossparent effects of WFH. JEL Classification: D13, I31, J13
Problem definition: Women have been shown to prefer jobs with a better work-life balance across many fields. Given that serving as a state political representative requires a significant amount of travel between one’s home district and the state capitol, this suggests that long commute distances may reduce the number of women seeking political office in the United States. At the same time, state political positions vary in their degree of flexibility (e.g., full-time versus part-time) and commensurate compensation, which could make them more or less desirable to women. We analyze the extent to which longer commute distances deter female political participation and whether this effect varies according to the degree of flexibility and commensurate compensation provided by the position. Furthermore, we investigate policies that can lower the barrier to entry for women in politics. Methodology/results: Leveraging differences in distance to the state capitol among state legislative districts, we show that districts located further from the state capitol in states with full-time legislatures have a lower percentage of female candidates, whereas in states with part-time legislatures, the opposite is true. The effect in hybrid states, that is, those state legislatures with a workload between part-time and full-time, appears to be slightly negative or neutral. We then conduct two conjoint survey experiments administered to a pool of college students and past political candidates to understand how policies allowing for paid parental leave, remote work/proxy voting, or daycare benefits in political positions could help to close the gender gap in politics. We find that paid parental leave might motivate women at the beginning of their political careers with longer commutes to run for office while a remote work/proxy voting policy could help to sustain the political careers of these types of women. Managerial implications: For organizers and policymakers seeking to encourage more women to run for office, our work shows that commute distance is a barrier for would-be candidates in states with full-time legislatures and that making paid parental leave and remote work/proxy voting available may help.
Funding: This work was supported by Gies College of Business (Junior Faculty Council Grant).
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2024.0927 .
Thuiswerken is sinds de coronapandemie voor veel Nederlandse werknemers een vaste optie geworden. Van een terugkeer naar niveaus van vóór de pandemie lijkt geen sprake. Nederland is zelfs koploper thuiswerken in Europa. De ongelijkheid in de mate van thuiswerken, tussen sectoren maar ook tussen opleidingsniveaus, is groot en roept nieuwe dilemma’s op voor organisaties en samenleving.
Race and ethnicity are foundational forces in political communication. To better understand how race and ethnicity affect educational management and leadership, this chapter discusses the experiences and difficulties faced by educational managers in educational organizations. This chapter sheds light on how to overcome these obstacles and comprehend the nuanced role that race and ethnicity play in education. It draws attention to the particular challenges encountered by minority managers and offers solutions, such as adjustments that educational institutions should make to better support them. It focuses on how critical it is for educational institutions to acknowledge and address the unique difficulties that managers encounter. They improve and level up the educational atmosphere when they take this action. This benefits all parties involved in education, not just the management. This information will pave the way for a more inclusive and dynamic future in educational management, where diversity is viewed as an asset rather than an impediment.
Ridesharing gained popularity as a flexible and readily available job option. However, limited research has focused on the gendered impacts of this new model on a large scale. In theory, ridesharing could disproportionately attract women, as they often take flexible work to balance family responsibilities. However, the driver occupation is historically male-dominated, and women need to overcome cultural barriers to join ridesharing. This article leverages the staggered entry of Uber in Brazilian cities to examine gender variations in responses to ridesharing. Overall, the results identify important gender nuances. There was a noticeable increase in the number of female drivers, although men still dominate the occupation. Gender differences in hours of work and earnings have decreased, mainly due to reductions experienced by men. The presence of children in the household is a key determinant of which women become drivers but has less impact on men. For instance, mothers of young children (aged 0–6) were not significantly attracted to ridesharing, but mothers of older children and childless women were. Safety concerns remain a significant barrier to women, and the level of gender violence in cities is negatively associated with women's probability of being a driver.
This paper investigates how having more White coworkers influences the subsequent retention and promotion of Black women relative to other race-gender groups. Studying 9,037 new hires at a professional services firm, we first document large racial turnover and promotion gaps: Even after controlling for observable characteristics, Black employees are 6.7 percentage points (32%) more likely to turn over within two years and 18.7 percentage points (26%) less likely to be promoted on time than their White counterparts. The largest turnover gap is between Black and White women, at 8.9 percentage points (51%). We argue that initial assignment to project teams is conditionally random based on placebo tests and qualitative evidence. Under this assumption, we show that a one-standard-deviation (20.8 percentage points) increase in the share of White coworkers is associated with a 15.8-percentage-point increase in turnover and an 11.5-percentage-point decrease in promotion for Black women. We refer to these effects as intersectional: Black women are the only race-gender group whose turnover and promotion are negatively impacted by White coworkers. We explore potential causal pathways through which these peer effects may emerge: Black women who were initially assigned to Whiter teams are subsequently more likely to be labeled as low performers and report fewer billable hours, both of which are predictors of higher turnover and lower promotion for all employees. Our findings contribute to the literature on peer effects, intersectionality, and the practice of managing race and gender inequality in organizations.
This paper was accepted by Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, organizations.
Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership at University of California, Berkeley-Haas, Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, and the Hub for Equal Representation at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02010 .
This study tests a central theoretical assumption of stress process and job strain models, namely that increases in employees’ control and support at work should promote well-being. To do so, we use a group-randomized field trial with longitudinal data from 867 information technology (IT) workers to investigate the well-being effects of STAR, an organizational intervention designed to promote greater employee control over work time and greater supervisor support for workers’ personal lives. We also offer a unique analysis of an unexpected field effect—a company merger—among workers surveyed earlier versus later in the study period, before or after the merger announcement. We find few STAR effects for the latter group, but over 12 months, STAR reduced burnout, perceived stress, and psychological distress, and increased job satisfaction, for the early survey group. STAR effects are partially mediated by increases in schedule control and declines in family-to-work conflict and burnout (an outcome and mediator) by six months. Moderating effects show that STAR benefits women in reducing psychological distress and perceived stress, and increases non-supervisory employees’ job satisfaction. This study demonstrates, with a rigorous design, that organizational-level initiatives can promote employee well-being.
U.S. workweeks are long compared to workweeks in other rich countries. Much leß well-known is that Americans are more likely to work at night and on weekends. The authors examine the relationship between these two phenomena using the American Time Use Survey and time-diary data from France Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Only small portions of the U.S.-European differences are attributable to observable characteristics. Adjusting for demographic and occupational differences, Americans' incidence of night and weekend work would drop by no more than 10% if the average European workweek prevailed. Even if no Americans worked long hours, the incidence of unusual work times in the United States would far exceed those in continental Europe.
Using data from a 2007 U.S. survey of workers, this article examines the implications of schedule control for work—family role blurring and work—family conflict. Four main findings indicate that (a) schedule control is associated with more frequent working at home and work—family multitasking activities; (b) the positive association between schedule control and multitasking suppresses the negative association between schedule control and work— family conflict; (c) the positive association between working at home and multitasking is weaker among individuals with greater schedule control; and (d) the positive association between work—family multitasking and work— family conflict is weaker among individuals with greater schedule control. Our findings reveal previously undocumented mediating, suppression, and moderating patterns in the ways that schedule control contributes to work—family role blurring and work—family conflict. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for views of schedule control as a “resource” and theories about the borders in the work—family interface.
nullThe two key predictions of hedonic wage theory are that there is a trade-o¤ between wages and nonmonetary rewards and that the latter can be used as a sorting device by firms to attract and retain the kind of employees they desire. Empirical analysis of these topics are scarce as they require detailed data on all monetary as well as nonmonetary rewards, not only for the job chosen but also for alternative offers. In this paper this data predicament is solved by the use of the vignettes method to estimate individuals. willingness to pay for fringe benefits and job amenities. We find clear negative wage-fringe trade-offs, con-siderable heterogeneity in willingness to pay for fringe benefits, and signs of sorting. The findings imply that personnel economics models can be applied also to the analysis of nonmonetary rewards.
This paper provides evidence that the decline in the real value of the minimum wage and in the rate of unionization account for a significant share of the increase in wage inequality in the United States between 1979 and 1988. The role of the minimum wage is particularly important for women, while deunionization has the largest impact on men. The authors develop a semiparametric procedure that applies kernel density methods to appropriately weighted samples. The procedure provides a visually clear representation of where in the density of wages institutional and labor market forces exert the greatest impact. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.
This paper studies the effects of unions on the structure of wages using an estimation technique that accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status and potential correlations between union status and unobserved productivity. The model is estimated separately for five skill groups using a panel data set formed from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The results suggest that unions raise wages more for workers with lower levels of observed skills. Union workers are positively selected from the population of workers with lower levels of observed skill and negatively selected from the population with higher observed skills. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.
In this article, the authors show that people skills are important determinants of labor- market outcomes, including occupational choice and wages. Technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. The authors particularly focus on how the increased importance of these skills has affected the labor-market outcomes of underrepresented groups, assuming that gender differences in interactions and cultural differences and prejudice may impede cross- racial and ethnic interactions. Estimates for Britain, Germany, and the United States are consistent with such an explanation. An acceleration in the rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s in the United States can help explain why the gender wage gap closed and the black-white wage gap stagnated in these years relative to the preceding and following years.
Self-control problems change the logic of agency theory by partly aligning the interests of the firm and worker: both now value contracts that elicit future effort. Findings from a year-long field experiment with full-time data entry workers support this idea. First, workers increase output by voluntarily choosing dominated contracts (which penalize low output but give no additional rewards for high output). Second, effort increases closer to (randomly assigned) paydays. Third, the contract and payday effects are strongly correlated within workers, and this correlation grows with experience. We suggest that workplace features such as high-powered incentives or effort monitoring may provide self-control benefits.
The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the "last" chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn't hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.
The authors study the pecuniary penalties for family-related amenities in the workplace (e.g., job interruptions, short hours, part-time work, and flexibility during the workday), how women have responded to them, and how the penalties have changed over time. The pecuniary penalties to behaviors that are beneficial to family appear to have decreased in many professions. Self-employment has declined in many of the high-end professions (e.g., pharmacy, optometry, dentistry, law, medicine, and veterinary medicine) where it was costly in terms of workplace flexibility. The authors conclude that many professions have experienced an increase in workplace flexibility, driven often by exogenous factors (e.g., increased scale of operations and shifts to corporate ownership of business) but also endogenously because of an increased number of women. Workplace flexibility in some positions, notably in the business and financial sectors, has lagged.
A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to “shirking
from home.” We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call
center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months.
Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick
days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also
reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance
fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental
employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from
WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management
practices like WFH. JEL Codes: D24, L23, L84, M11, M54, O31.
Pharmacy has become a female-majority profession that is highly remunerated with a small gender earnings gap and low earnings dispersion relative to other occupations. We sketch a labor market framework based on the theory of equalizing differences to integrate and interpret our empirical findings on earnings, hours of work, and the part-time work wage penalty for pharmacists. Using extensive surveys of pharmacists for 2000, 2004, and 2009 as well as samples from the American Community Surveys and the Current Population Surveys, we explore the gender earnings gap, the penalty to part-time work, labor force persistence, and the demographics of pharmacists relative to other college graduates. We address why the substantial entrance of women into the profession was associated with an increase in their earnings relative to male pharmacists. We conclude that the changing nature of pharmacy employment with the growth of large national pharmacy chains and hospitals and the related decline of independent pharmacies played key roles in the creation of a more family-friendly, female-friendly pharmacy profession. The position of pharmacist is probably the most egalitarian of all U.S. professions today.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Stated-preference methods are a class of evaluation techniques for studying the preferences of patients and other stakeholders. While these methods span a variety of techniques, conjoint-analysis methods-and particularly discrete-choice experiments (DCEs)-have become the most frequently applied approach in health care in recent years. Experimental design is an important stage in the development of such methods, but establishing a consensus on standards is hampered by lack of understanding of available techniques and software. This report builds on the previous ISPOR Conjoint Analysis Task Force Report: Conjoint Analysis Applications in Health-A Checklist: A Report of the ISPOR Good Research Practices for Conjoint Analysis Task Force. This report aims to assist researchers specifically in evaluating alternative approaches to experimental design, a difficult and important element of successful DCEs. While this report does not endorse any specific approach, it does provide a guide for choosing an approach that is appropriate for a particular study. In particular, it provides an overview of the role of experimental designs for the successful implementation of the DCE approach in health care studies, and it provides researchers with an introduction to constructing experimental designs on the basis of study objectives and the statistical model researchers have selected for the study. The report outlines the theoretical requirements for designs that identify choice-model preference parameters and summarizes and compares a number of available approaches for constructing experimental designs. The task-force leadership group met via bimonthly teleconferences and in person at ISPOR meetings in the United States and Europe. An international group of experimental-design experts was consulted during this process to discuss existing approaches for experimental design and to review the task force's draft reports. In addition, ISPOR members contributed to developing a consensus report by submitting written comments during the review process and oral comments during two forum presentations at the ISPOR 16th and 17th Annual International Meetings held in Baltimore (2011) and Washington, DC (2012).
Recognizing the dearth of research on flexible work schedules in nonprofit organizations, the author conducted a statewide survey of Illinois independent nonprofits as well as follow-up personal interviews with top administrators in select user organizations. Survey results indicate that a substantial proportion of these nonprofit organizations used flexible work arrangements. Four arrangement types in particular—flextime, parttime, compressed work week, and telecommuting—were found to be used more frequently in Illinois nonprofits than other research findings suggest. Although follow-up interviews revealed that the percentages of employees in the various types of arrangements were low, overall arrangement use improved staff retention and morale and maintained performance. More than half of the administrators interviewed expected the use of all arrangement types to increase in the future.
An important line of research using laboratory experiments has provided a new potential reason for gender imbalances in labour
markets: men are more competitively inclined than women. Whether, and to what extent, gender differences in attitudes toward
competition lead to differences in naturally occurring labour markets remains an open question. To examine this, we run a
natural field experiment on job-entry decisions where we randomize almost 9000 job-seekers into different compensation regimes.
By varying the role that individual competition plays in setting the wage and the gender composition, we examine whether a
competitive compensation regime, by itself, can cause differential job entry. The data highlight the power of the compensation
regime in that women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings. Yet, there are important factors that attenuate
the gender differences, including whether the job is performed in teams, whether the position has overt gender associations,
and the age of the job-seekers. We also find that the effect is most pronounced in labour markets with attractive alternative
employment options. Furthermore, our results suggest that preferences over uncertainty can be just as important as preferences
over competition per se in driving job-entry choices.
This study documents the rapid growth in home-based wage and salary employment and the sharp decline in the home-based wage penalty in the United States between 1980 and 2000. These twin patterns, observed for both men and women in most occupation groups, suggest that employer costs of providing home-based work arrangements have decreased. Consistent with information technology (IT) advances being an important source of these falling costs, I find that occupation-gender cells that had larger increases in on-the-job IT use also experienced larger increases in the home-based employment share and larger declines in the home-based wage penalty.
I am grateful to Joseph B. Kadane for numerous constructive suggestions offered during discussions of this research. The financial sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation through grant DOT-OS-4006 is also acknowledged. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author.
Contingent valuation surveys in which respondents state their willingness to pay (WTP) for public goods are coming into use in cost-benefit analyses and in litigation over environmental losses. The validity of the method is brought into question by several experimental observations. An embedding effect is demonstrated, in which WTP for a good varies depending on whether it is evaluated on its own or as part of a more inclusive category. The ordering of various public issues by WTP is predicted with significant accuracy by independent ratings of the moral satisfaction associated with contributions to these causes. Contingent valuation responses reflect the willingness to pay for the moral satisfaction of contributing to public goods, not the economic value of these goods.
Misclassification of dependent variables in a discrete-response model causes inconsistent coefficient estimates when traditional estimation techniques (e.g., probit or logit) are used. A modified maximum likelihood estimator that corrects for misclassification is proposed. A semiparametric approach, which combines the maximum rank correlation estimator of Han (1987) (Journal of Econometrics 35, 303–316) with isotonic regression, allows for more general forms of misclassification than the maximum likelihood approach. The parametric and semiparametric estimation techniques are applied to a model of job change with two commonly used data sets, the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).
We design and implement a field experiment to elicit and calibrate in-sample hypothetical and actual bids given the presence of other goods and intensity of market experience. Using market goods that possess characteristics beyond the norm but yet remain deliverable, bidding behavior was consistent with theory. But we also observe the average calibration factor for hypothetical bids in the auction with other goods to be more severe (0.3) than for the auction without the goods (0.4). The results support the view that the calibration of hypothetical and actual bidding is good- and context-specific.
We evaluate the choices of elders across their insurance options under the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug plan, using a unique data set of prescription drug claims matched to information on the characteristics of choice sets. We document that elders place much more weight on plan premiums than on expected out of pocket costs; value plan financial characteristics beyond any impacts on their own financial expenses or risk; and place almost no value on variance reducing aspects of plans. Partial equilibrium welfare analysis implies that welfare would have been 27% higher if patients had all chosen rationally.
Using two strategies, we show that consumers underreact to taxes that are not salient. First, using a field experiment in a grocery store, we find that posting tax-inclusive price tags reduces demand by 8 percent. Second, increases in taxes included in posted prices reduce alcohol consumption more than increases in taxes applied at the register. We develop a theoretical framework for applied welfare analysis that accommodates salience effects and other optimization failures. The simple formulas we derive imply that the economic incidence of a tax depends on its statutory incidence, and that even policies that induce no change in behavior can create efficiency losses. (JEL C93, D12, H25, H71)
A model analyzing the choice of shift is developed and estimated using data from two supplements to the Current Population Survey. The findings show a positive wage premium for shift work that varies with personal characteristics, and there is strong evidence showing the importance of self-selection, as workers with low potential daytime earnings are more likely to choose night work and supplement their earnings. The findings demonstrate that cross-section estimates of wage premiums for union membership and firm size are biased upward because they pick up some of the compensation differentials for shift work. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper models individual choice between two types of jobs as dependent on the difference i n potential earnings and on preferences for nonpecuniary compensation. The model leads to simultaneous estimation of earnings and job choice functions in a manner that takes account of self-selection of individuals into the sector of highest utility. An application to lawyers choosing between private and "public-interest" law casts doubt on the notion that public-interest lawyers are accepting substantially lower earnings by virtue of their choice-an impression derived from es timation of earnings functions without accounting for self-selection. The estimation technique also takes proper account of the "'choice-based" nature of the sample. Copyright 1988 by University of Chicago Press.
This article investigates the consequences of labor-market search for the theory of hedonic wages. The authors find that the introduction of search has surprising consequences for the theory of hedonic wages. In particular, they demonstrate that the equilibrium distribution of wage and nonwage amenity bundles generally bears little resemblance to workers' underlying preferences. A consequence of this analysis is that estimates of workers' marginal willingness to pay, derived from the conventional hedonic wage methodology, are biased. In addition, the authors demonstrate that search generates differences between firm-level and employee-level data that can cause substantial deviations in the estimates of hedonic wage equations. Copyright 1998 by University of Chicago Press.
The theory of equalizing differences asserts that workers receive compensating wage premiums when they accept jobs with undesirable
nonwage characteristics, holding the worker's characteristics constant. Previous research provides only inconsistent support
for the theory, with wrong-signed or insignificant estimates of these wage premiums fairly common. An oft-cited reason for
these anomalies is that important characteristics of the worker remain unmeasured, biasing the estimates.
In this paper, longitudinal data are used to test this conjecture. Although such data improve the control for worker characteristics,
the plausibility of the estimates is not markedly improved. Alternative explanations for these results are considered.
“It's indoor work and no heavy lifting.”
—Senator Robert Dole, explaining why he wanted to be Vice President.
ABSTRACT : This paper looks at how well Finland performs in high growth entrepreneurship and uses data from the Global Entrepreneurship monitor to benchmark Finland against other European countries. It is found that Finland’s prevalence rate of high growth entrepreneurial activity lags significantly behind most of its European and all of its Scandinavian peers. That this weak performance in high-growth entrepreneurship goes hand in hand with Finland being a world leader in per capita investment in R&D may be described as a paradox. The reasons underlying the underperformance of Finland remain however unclear. At this point, explanations should be sought in culture, industrial traditions and systemic experience in high growth entrepreneurship.
This paper evaluates the relationship between wages and the scientific orientation of R&D organizations. Science-oriented firms allow researchers to publish in the scientific literature and pursue individual research agendas. Adoption of a Science- oriented research approach (i.e., Science) is driven by two distinct forces: a (a Preference effect) and R&D productivity gains arising from earlier access to discoveries (a Productivity effect). The equilibrium relationship between wages and Science reflects the relative salience of these effects: the Preference effect contributes to a negative compensating differential while the Productivity effect raises the possibility of rent-sharing between firms and researchers. In addition, because the value of participating in Science is increasing in the prestige of researchers, Science tends to be adopted by those firms who employ higher-quality researchers. This structural relationship between the adoption of Science and unobserved heterogeneity in researcher ability leads to bias in the context of hedonic wage and productivity regressions which do not account for such effects. This paper exploits a novel field-based empirical approach to substantially overcome this bias. Specifically, prior to accepting a specific job offer, many scientists receive multiple job offers, making it possible to calculate the wage- Science curve for individual scientists, controlling for ability level. The methodology is applied to a sample of postdoctoral biologists. The results suggest a strong negative relationship between wages and Science. For example, firms who allow their employees to publish extract, on average, a 25% wage discount. The results are robust to restricting the sample to non-academic job offers, but the findings depend critically on the inclusion of the researcher fixed effects. The paper's conclusion, then, is that, conditional on scientific ability, scientists do indeed pay to be scientists.
This paper evaluates a pilot program run by a company called OPOWER, previously known as Positive Energy, to mail home energy reports to residential utility consumers. The reports compare a household’s energy use to that of its neighbors and provide energy conservation tips. Using data from randomized natural field experiment at 80,000 treatment and control households in Minnesota, I estimate that the monthly program reduces energy consumption by 1.9 to 2.0 percent relative to baseline. In a treatment arm receiving reports each quarter, the effects decay in the months between letters and again increase upon receipt of the next letter. This suggests either that the energy conservation information is not useful across seasons or, perhaps more interestingly, that consumers’ motivation or attention is malleable and non-durable. I show that “profiling,” or using a statistical decision rule to target the program at households whose observable characteristics suggest larger treatment effects, could substantially improve cost effectiveness in future programs. The effects of this program provide additional evidence that non-price “nudges” can substantially affect consumer behavior.
For an internal consistency check, one can examine WTP responses to different surveys. Holding an environmental problem constant, concave preferences imply WTP concave in the success of a remedy. The same preferences imply WTP convex in the magnitude of an environmental problem, assuming a successful remedy. Having opposite signed curvature of these two WTP patterns is general, not requiring concave preferences. For an adding-up test, an environmental commodity can be divided. Then, WTP for one part plus WTP for the second part, conditional on already having the first part, equals WTP for the whole, adjusted by an income effect. © Academic Press.
This paper we outline the “choice experiment” approach to environmental valuation. This approach has its roots in Lancaster's characteristics theory of value, in random utility theory and in experimental design. We show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets, such as forests and rivers, can be estimated from pair-wise choices, as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole. These choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function, and to minimise required sample size. Choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods, such as contingent valuation and travel cost-type models, although many design issues remain unresolved. Applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited. We illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent UK study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes. This study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998
This article examines nonsequential search when jobs vary with respect to nonpecuniary characteristics. In the presence of frictions in the labor market, the equilibrium job distribution need not show evidence of compensating wage differentials. The model also generates several pervasive features of labor markets: unemployment and vacancies, apparent discrimination, and market segmentation. When workers are homogeneous, restrictions on the range of job offers decrease welfare and cannot reduce unemployment. However, when workers have heterogeneous preferences, such restrictions may lower unemployment, and can even lead to a Pareto improvement in welfare. We consider the impact of policies banning discrimination and regulating working conditions. Copyright 2004 by the Economics Department Of The University Of Pennsylvania And Osaka University Institute Of Social And Economic Research Association.
Without market outcomes for comparison, internal consistency tests, particularly adding-up tests, are needed for credibility. When tested, contingent valuation has failed. Proponents find surveys tested poorly done. To the authors' knowledge, no survey has passed these tests. The 'embedding effect' is the similarity of willingness-to-pay responses that theory suggests (and sometimes requires) be different. This problem has long been recognized but not solved. The authors conclude that current methods are not suitable for damage assessment or benefit-cost analysis. They believe the problems come from an absence of preferences, not a flaw in survey methodology, making improvement unlikely. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Workers with difficult working conditions can be expected to be compensated by higher wages. They may, for example, choose shift work because of compensating wages but it is also possible that they prefer shift work. The previous empirical evidence is mixed. We study if there are compensating wages for shift work by estimating a switching regression model with endogenous switching using French matched employer–employee data for male full time blue collar workers. It is crucial to adjust for selectivity and not to pool data for shift and day workers. A main result is that there is a significant shift premium, the wage rate for shift workers is 16 percent higher than for day workers. A second main result is that the shift premium is significant for shift work choice. This premium compensates workers who do not self–select into shift work. A 1 percentage point increase in the premium increases the shift work probability by 0.87 percentage points.