This study examines the variation in educational outcomes across and within countries using the TIMSS mathematics tests. It documents the wide cross-country variation in the level and dispersion of test scores. Countries with the highest test scores are those with the least inequality in scores,...

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a share ownership plan, we find considerable variation in joining among...

This paper uses data from NBER surveys of over 40,000 employees in hundreds of facilities in 14 firms and from employees on the 2002 and 2006 General Social Surveys to explore how shared compensation affects turnover, absenteeism, loyalty, worker effort, and other outcomes affecting workplace...

This study examines two innovative efforts to provide union services to workers with the aid of low cost Internet communication: the AFL-CIO's Working America, a "community affiliate" that enrolled 2 million workers from 2004 to 2007 by canvassing them at their homes and over the Internet...

This paper examines cross-country differences in labour policies and practices and employee performance and attitudes toward work from a sample of nearly 30,000 employees in a large multinational manufacturing firm. The analysis shows: 1) large establishment and country differences in work...

This study uses a 10-year longitudinal database on U.S. manufacturing establishments to analyze the dynamics of the adoption and termination of employee involvement programs (EI). We show that firms' use of EI has not grown continuously, but rather introduce and terminate EI policies in ways...

This paper examines performance in a tournament setting with different levels of inequality in rewards and different provision of information about individual's skill at the task prior to the tournament. We find that that total tournament output depends on inequality according to an inverse U...

Workers have responded differently to declining union density in the US and UK. US workers have unfilled demand for unions whereas many UK workers free-ride at unionized workplaces. To explain this difference, we create a scalar measure of worker needs for representation and relate desire for...

Puerto Rico has an extraordinarily low employment rate for men. We document the low employment rate using Census of Population and labor force survey data and offer "the rich uncle (Sam) hypothesis" that the connection of the relatively poor economy of Puerto Rico to the wealthier US has created...

1. The primary determinant of winning a GRF are academic skills, which greatly impact panel ratings of applicants. Consistent with efforts to increase S&E diversity, women and minorities have higher changes of winning an award than white men with similar attributes