In recent decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has been associated with far-reaching changes in the design of jobs. However, it still remains unclear whether these changes will lead to more centralization or more decentralization in firms. Previous literature on this debate...

Companies typically control various aspects of their workers’ behaviors. In this paper, we investigate whether the hierarchical distance of the superior who imposes such control measures matters for the workers’ ensuing reaction. In particular, we test, in a laboratory experiment, whether...

We merge firm-level data on ownership linkages with administrative data on German workers to analyze how the position in a business group hierarchy affects workers' wages. To acknowledge that ownership linkages are not onedirectional, we propose an index of hierarchical distance to the ultimate...

Theory posits hierarchy as a response to coordination challenges and emphasizes organizationsize and the need to transfer knowledge between people as the mainspring of these challenges.Building on the knowledge-based view, we propose that knowledge scope—the variety ofknowledge across an...

Hierarchy plays an integral role in organizational structure and practices, as well as in society more generally. In Confucian-influenced cultures, and especially in South Korea, social hierarchies are often based on age, and age dynamics can therefore influence social decision-making and...

We assemble a unique data set of more than a million matrimonial ads to study the evolution of partner preferences. Using ads published in major news outlets from Canada, France and India from 1950 to 1995, we show that stated preferences for economic aspects of an ideal partner have fallen...

This paper introduces a large-dimensional covariance estimator that exploits the hierarchical structure in financial returns. Prevailing techniques that filter the noise in a covariance matrix according to hierarchical agglomeration are fragile to data perturbations and inordinately suppress...