Impact of importing foreign talent on performance levels of local co-workers

When skilled labour is imported to work in a creative industry, local workers may benefit, in terms of their own level of skill, through contact with new techniques and practices. European basketball offers an opportunity to investigate the reality of this general claim. For a panel of 47 European countries observed over more than twenty years, we model probability of qualification for, and subsequent performance in, Olympic Tournaments and World and European Championships. We demonstrate that, consistent with the spillover hypothesis, an increase in the number of foreigners in a domestic league tends to generate a subsequent improvement in the performance of the national team (which has to be comprised only of local players).     

The effect of trade on productivity growth and the demand for skilled workers in Canada

We use an input–output model to examine the effect of trade integration on productivity growth and the demand for skilled workers in Canada for the period 1981–1997. We find that trade integration has a positive effect on both labour productivity and total factor productivity. Labour productivity and total factor productivity grew faster in export and import industries than in the total business sector over this period, and this productivity growth gap has widened over time. Canada is found to have a comparative advantage in capital- and natural-resource-intensive industries, although it has declined over time. We find that trade integration has little effect on the demand for skilled and unskilled workers in Canada.     

Technological and organizational changes as determinants of the skill bias: evidence from the Italian machinery industry

Recent empirical literature has introduced the ‘Skill Biased Organizational Change’ (SBOC) hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries. This paper focuses on the importance of the SBOC with respect to the more traditional ‘Skill Biased Technological Change’ in driving the skill composition of workers in the Italian machinery sector. A dynamic panel data analysis is proposed which uses a unique firm‐level dataset. The results show that both skilled and unskilled workers are negatively affected by technological change, while organizational change—which in turn may be linked to new technologies—is positively linked to skilled workers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peer pressure,incentives, and gender: An experimental analysis of motivation in the workplace

We present results from a real-effort experiment, simulating actual workplace conditions, comparing the productivity of workers under fixed wages and piece rates. Workers, who were paid to enter data, were exposed to different degrees of peer pressure under both payment systems. The peer pressure was generated in the form of private information about the productivity of their peers. We have two main results. First, we find no level of peer pressure for which the productivity of either male or female workers is significantly higher than the productivity without peer pressure. Second, we find that very low and very high levels of peer pressure can significantly decrease productivity (particularly for men paid fixed wages). These results are consistent with models of conformism and self-motivation.     

Heterogeneous worker ability and team-based production: Evidence from major league baseball, 1920–2009

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team level for the period 1920–2009 in order to test whether teams built on a more even distribution of observed talent perform better than those teams with a mixture of highly able and less able players. The dependent variable used in the regressions is the percentage of games a team wins each season. We find that conditioning on average player ability, dispersion of both batting and pitching talent displays an optimal degree of inequality, in that teams with too high or too low a spread in player ability perform worse than teams with a more balanced distribution of offensive and defensive talent. These findings have potentially important applications both inside and outside the sporting world.     

Capital-skill complementarity,productivity and wages: Evidence from plant-level data for a developing country

Different types of labor and capital inputs have varying productive contributions that are dependent on plant characteristics. We estimate such contributions and their underlying determinants, recognizing the interactions among labor and capital components that reflect their substitutability or complementarity, for Turkish manufacturing plants. We distinguish technical and non-technical labor, and structures, machinery and computer capital, as well as the shares of female workers and imported capital in our production function specification. We find capital-skill complementary for both machinery and computers; greater productive contributions and thus wages for skilled labor are associated with more machinery intensity and computer use. The reverse is true for unskilled labor, which is complementary only with capital structures. Our results suggest that synergies among skilled (technical) labor, computers, and machinery capital have productivity- and skilled wage-enhancing effects that could contribute to productivity convergence of developing toward developed countries, even with their differing industry and input composition.     

Pay,productivity and aging in Major League Baseball

Using panels of player pay and performance from Major League Baseball (MLB), we examine trends in player productivity and salaries as players age. Pooling players of all ability levels leads to a systematic bias in regression coefficients. After addressing this problem by dividing players into talent quintiles, we find that the best players peak about 2 years later than marginal players, and development and depreciation of performance appear to be more pronounced for players with the highest ability levels. Within-career variation, however, is less pronounced than between-player variation, and the performance level of players within a given quintile will typically remain lower than the talent level for rookies in the next higher quintile. We also find preliminary evidence that free agents are paid proportionately to their production at all ability levels, whereas young players’ salaries are suppressed by similar amounts.     

ICT Investment, Productivity and Efficiency: Evidence at Firm Level Using a Stochastic Frontier Approach

We analyze the determinants of ICT investment and the impact of information technology on productivity and efficiency on a representative sample of small and medium sized Italian firms. In order to test the most relevant theoretical predictions from the ICT literature we evaluate the impact of investment in software, hardware and telecommunications of these firms on a series of intermediate variables and on productivity. Among intermediate variables we consider the demand for skilled workers, the introduction of new products and processes and the rate of capacity utilization. Among productivity measures we include total factor productivity, the productivity of labor, and the distance from the best practice by using a stochastic frontier approach. Our results show that the effect of ICT investment on firm efficiency can be more clearly detected at firm level data by decomposing it into software and telecommunications investment. We find that telecommunications investment positively affects the creation of new products and processes, while software investment increases the demand for skilled workers, average labor productivity and proximity to the optimal production frontier. We interpret these results by arguing that ICT investment modifies the trade-off between scale and scope economies. While software investment increases the scale of firm operations, telecommunications investment creates a flexibility option easing the switch from a Fordist to a flexible network productive model in which products and processes are more frequently adapted to satisfy consumers taste for variety.     

Team formation with complementary skills

One explanation for the prevalence of self‐managed work teams is that they enable workers with complementary skills to specialize in the tasks they do best, a benefit that may be enhanced if workers can sort themselves into teams. To assess this explanation, we design a real‐effort experiment to study the endogenous formation of teams, and its effect on productivity, when specialization either is or is not feasible. We find a strong positive interaction between endogenous team formation and the ability to specialize, indicating that endogenous team formation is a particularly effective mechanism for promoting team output in production environments that enable the exploitation of skill complementarities.     

Misallocation,informality, and human capital: Understanding the role of institutions

The aim of this paper is to quantify the role of formal-sector institutions in shaping the demand for human capital and the level of informality. We propose a firm dynamics model where firms face capital market imperfections and costs of operating in the formal sector. Formal firms have a larger set of production opportunities and the ability to employ skilled workers, but informal firms can avoid the costs of formalization. These firm-level distortions give rise to endogenous formal and informal sectors and, more importantly, affect the demand for skilled workers. The model predicts that countries with a low degree of debt enforcement and high costs of formalization are characterized by relatively lower stocks of skilled workers, larger informal sectors, low allocative efficiency, and measured TFP. Moreover, we find that the interaction between entry costs and financial frictions (as opposed to the sum of their individual effects) is the main driver of these differences. This complementarity effect derives from the introduction of skilled workers, which prevents firms from substituting labor for capital and in turn moves them closer to the financial constraint.     

Employee Involvement And Pay At Us And Canadian Auto Suppliers

We use survey data and field research to investigate the effects of employee involvement practices on outcomes for blue-collar workers in the auto-supply industry. We find these practices raise wages by 3–5%. The causal mechanism linking involvement and wages appears to be most consistent with efficiency-wage theories, and least consistent with compensating differences. We find no evidence that employee involvement affects plants' survival or employment growth.     

Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skilled and Unskilled Workers

We use an input–output model to examine the effects of trade and domestic consumption, technology and labor productivity on skilled and unskilled worker demand. We found that trade was not the major contributor to changes in demand for skilled and unskilled labor during 1972–92, counter to the continuing debate on the trade-widening wage gap linkage. We found that skill intensity, i.e. the ratio of high-skilled to low-skilled workers for exports compared with imports, exceeded one during 1972–92, but did not increase. We explore alternative definitions of skilled and unskilled, and find our results to be robust to these alternative definitions.     

Managerial time constraints and young worker productivity: Natural experiments with NFL rookies

The 2011 National Football League lockout and movement of the 2014 draft to a later date compressed the off‐seasons preceding the 2011 and 2014 seasons, exogenously tightening time constraints within which managers—head coaches and their staffs—engage in short‐run training of players. We exploit these natural experiments to investigate how this impacted the productivity of young workers (National Football League rookies). Results estimated for a sample of over 1,500 rookies support hypotheses emanating from an economic model of worker training time allocation and indicate reduced productivity along several dimensions. Survival analysis shows evidence of shorter player career durations along certain lines, suggesting longer term consequences.     

The effects of age,experience and managers upon baseball performance

As workers age, they acquire valuable experience even while their physical abilities eventually decline. Bosses/managers have the potential to alter the complex relationships between experience and declining physical abilities for better, or for worse. We examine the performances of 39,698 Major League baseball players in the 20th century and find that: (1) hitting performance peaks at age 30, base stealing at 27, and pitching at 34; (2) except for pitching, even experienced managers usually have little influence on player performance, or that influence is negative. In general, managers and coaches play limited roles in occupations where natural ability trumps other factors.     

数字技术赋能服务业生产率：理论机制与经验证据

本文基于理论模型阐释数字技术对服务业生产率的影响,分析高技能劳动力与市场化水平对二者关系的调节效应,并从数字产业的发展与数字技术的应用等维度构建指标体系,测算2011—2019年中国30个省份的数字技术水平,实证检验数字技术对服务业生产率的影响与异质性冲击。结果表明：（1）数字技术对服务业生产率有显著的赋能效应;（2）数字技术对服务业生产率的赋能效应在中西部地区更加凸显,在东部地区暂未显现;（3）数字技术对服务业生产率的影响更加偏向于批发和零售业,交通运输、仓储和邮政业,金融业,房地产业等数据要素投入较多的行业;（4）高技能劳动力更易适应数字技术带来的变化,能够强化数字技术对服务业生产率的赋能;（5）市场化水平的提高能够进一步释放数字技术红利,从而显著增强数字技术对服务业生产率的积极影响。     

From the Arena Into the Streets: Hockey Violence, Economic Incentives and Public Policy

A bstract . The hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between violence and game attendance in the National Hockey League is tested; and the implications of the results for policies aimed at rectifying the violence considered. The empirical analysis, which is based principally on game by game data for the 1989/90 season, confirms the positive relationship, although it occurs mainly in American, not Canadian, cities. Since there is an incentive for teams to promote violence and because the legal system normally only prosecutes players not teams, the standard methods used to control violence—self regulation and the judicial process —are unlikely to work. Consideration should, therefore, be given to more direct control of violence.     

Employer learning and the returns to schooling

Theoretical models of employer learning suggest that an employee's education is an important signal to the employer initially. Over time, however, the returns to schooling should decrease with labor market experience and increase with initially unobserved ability, since the employer gradually obtains better information on the productivity of an employee. Replicating US studies using a large German panel data set (GSOEP), we find no evidence for the employer learning hypothesis. Differentiating blue-collar and white-collar workers and estimating quantile regressions, however, leads to the conclusion that employer learning takes place for blue-collar workers at the lower end of the wage distribution.     

Supporting team citizenship: The influence of team social resources on team‐level affiliation‐oriented and challenge‐oriented behaviour

Using a conservation of resources theoretical framework, we connect within‐team social resources with team‐level citizenship behaviours. In a sample of 385 employees situated in 70 teams from China, we confirm that team social support and team psychological safety interact to influence both affiliation‐oriented (AOCB) and challenge‐oriented (COCB) citizenship. Specifically, the two social resources substitute for one another, such that “either” team social support “or” psychological safety may be sufficient to increase AOCB. We find a consistent yet more complex pattern for COCB. Furthermore, drawing on the team prosocial motivation literature, we uncover team effort as a mediator to the effects of both social resources on AOCB. Our findings suggest that managers may enhance team citizenship by promoting team‐level social resources (social support and psychological safety), and they may only need to focus their energies on one of these resources, as exerting effort towards both may be redundant and inefficient.     

Worldwide willingness to delegate and country labor quality

The purpose of this article is to examine how country workforce characteristics shape the willingness of managers to delegate authority to subordinates. Using data from worldwide surveys, we tested to what extent country-specific factors, such as workforce competence, motivation, and probity, shape the willingness of managers to grant decisional power to subordinates. The results show that the willingness to delegate across the 47 countries might be explained by a combined effect of workforce competence, motivation, and probity, labeled quality of country labor. It is argued that in countries where managers perceive that the labor quality is lower (lack of competence, motivation, and probity), the managerial willingness to hand over power to subordinates decreases. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications for the managerial practice of firms doing business internationally. These findings will assist companies and managers to better understand why delegation might not work as expected in one country, whereas the same practice is both effective and indicated in other countries.     

Does recession drive convergence in firms’ productivity? Evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

This paper provides evidence on the effect of recessions and expansions on the productivity growth rate of productivity leaders and followers. We use data of a representative sample of the Spanish manufacturing sector for the period 1991 and 2005. These data allow us to estimate firm level productivity for a relatively long period of time and provide us with firm level perception of the business cycle. We find that productivity tends to converge in recessions because, in these periods, the productivity growth of followers is higher than the productivity growth of leaders. This fact is consistent with theoretical models of managerial incentives and competition. A recession can be seen as an exogenous increase in competition that reduces demand and poses a threat of liquidation. This threat is higher for followers and is high enough to create asymmetric incentives to become more productive. We test the robustness of our results to sample selection and different productivity measure.