In a field experiment, a large retail chain's CEO asked managers of treated stores “to do what they can” to reduce personnel turnover. Turnover decreases by a quarter for nine months; a reminder treatment triggers a similar decrease for a shorter period. Treated managers report shifting...

We propose a theory that emphasizes the role of managers for the production and allocation of human capital in firms. Managers invest time to train junior employees, and acquire information about the juniors' abilities that is valuable for job assignments. This dual role of managers matters...

Transition provides an unexplored opportunity to study how changes in ownership affect structure and human resource policies of firms. We investigate a unique data set (17 years, 1500 white collar workers) of a Russian insider-privatized firm. In contrast to conventional beliefs about...

We study how transition has affected human resource policies of a Russian heavy industry firm. Our data set contains personnel files of 1538 white-collar workers over 17 years: from 1984 to 2000. We find career paths before the first year of Gaidar's reforms, 1992, when Russian transition to a...