We examine the hypothesis that performance pay increases work hours. If performance pay incentivizes greater hours, this could cause the demonstrated link between performance pay and poorer worker health. Using US survey data, we confirm greater work hours and an increased likelihood of long...

The motherhood wage penalty is often cited as a contributor towards the gender earnings gap. A potential explanation involves women’s reduced labor force participation and paid work hours after having children. Yet, the literature says little about whether mothers’ labor supply reductions...

Nearly all workers have a supervisor or 'boss'. Yet there is almost no published research by economists into how bosses affect the quality of employees' lives. This study offers some of the first formal evidence. First, it is shown that a boss's technical competence is the single strongest...

Bosses play an important role in workplaces. Yet little is currently known about a foundational question. Are the right people promoted to be managers, team leaders, and supervisors? Gallup data and the famous Peter Principle both suggest that incompetent bosses are likely to be all around us....

Women typically earn less than men. The reasons are not fully understood. Previous studies argue that this may be because (i) women 'don't ask' and (ii) the reason they fail to ask is out of concern for the quality of their relationships at work. This account is difficult to assess with standard...

Existing studies of how note-taking tools affect student learning typically find that students who choose to take notes on a computer perform worse on assessments than students who take notes on paper. To our knowledge, the literature has not disentangled whether this result is due to the...

Women typically earn less than men. The reasons are not fully understood. Previous studies argue that this may be because (i) women 'don't ask' and (ii) the reason they fail to ask is out of concern for the quality of their relationships at work. This account is difficult to assess with standard...

The participation of females in the labor force has grown remarkably in the last 50 years. Yet almost nothing is known about how an increasing presence of female bosses affects employee well-being. We provide evidence consistent with the surprising idea that women are much less happy when they...