Some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted. The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process. This view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the...

Some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted. The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process. This view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the...

This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement, Seniority. Based on a database of over 5 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in job titles and how long they take to attain. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, inference benefits from the use of...

The paper discusses two approaches to spatial equilibrium in the labor market. The more traditional approach of labor economics assumes wage differentials represent arbitrageable differences in utility, with implications 1) that migration should be toward higher wage areas and 2) that migration...

Over long periods of human history, labor market equilibrium involved movements from low-wage areas to high-wage areas, a form of arbitrage under the implicit view that wage differentials corresponded to utility differentials. This “labor economics” view is likely to be viable as long as...

Promotions serve two purposes. They ought to provide incentives for employees and to select the best employee for a management position. However, if non-contractible managerial decision rights give rise to private benefits and preference misalignment between managers and the firm, these two...

We analyze a repeated principal-agent setting in which the principal cares about the agent's verifiable effort as well as an extra profit that can be generated only if the agent is talented. The agent is overconfident about his talent and updates beliefs using Bayes' rule. An exploitation...