We estimate how much of the gains from productivity spillovers through worker mobility is retained by the hiring firms, by the workers who bring spillovers, and by the other workers. Using linked employer-employee data from Danish manufacturing for the period 1995-2007, we find that at least...

Matched worker-firm data from Danish manufacturing reveal that 1) industries differ in within-firm worker skill dispersion, and 2) the correlation between within-firm skill dispersion and productivity is positive in industries with higher average skill dispersion. We argue that these patterns...

We present a model and an experiment that show, in a very general setting, that effort choice under a given linear pay-for-performance contract depends on how the financial risk associated with the scheme interacts with effort. We find that, under a given contract, if risk increases with effort,...

Anonymous and unannounced site inspections known as "Mystery Shopping" (MS) are common in multi-site service firms, but little is known about the strategic importance of this practice. We conceptualize MS as a monitoring tool firms use to implement the optimal allocation of site resources...

We study the effect of recognition on performance with a field experiment involving first-year undergraduate students at a Dutch university. Our treatment, given unannounced in randomly selected student groups, was to publicly recognize students who scored within the top 30% of their group on...

We study the impact of and reward to middle management ability using data from 245 stores of a nationwide retailer. The company scores six broad areas of management practice, the most important of which turns out to be "commercial awareness", where able managers raise labour productivity by 17%...

We test the effectiveness of team incentives by running a natural field experiment in a retail chain of 193 shops and 1,300 employees. As a response to intensified product market competition, the firm offered a bonus to shop teams for surpassing sales targets. A bonus to teams rather than...

We estimate the effect of downsizing announcement on workplace performance using data from a German bakery chain of 193 shops. Faced with intensified competition, the firm decided to sell or close down 57 of its worst performing shops. We identify the effect of downsizing from a plausibly...