11/2/2021 — Public calls for a national paid sick leave policy continue to grow in the United States. In the absence of a federal policy, many localities and states enacted their own paid sick leave mandates. We document an average increase of 1.9% in employment following the implementation of a paid sick leave policy.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• labor

2/16/2022 — As of 2019, salary history bans were enacted by 17 states and Puerto Rico with the stated purpose of reducing the gender pay gap. We argue that salary history bans may negatively affect wages as employers lose an informative signal of worker productivity. We empirically evaluate these laws using a large panel dataset of disaggregated wages covering all public-sector employees in 36 states and find, on average, that salary history bans lead to a 3% decrease in new-hire wages.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior
• strategy and entrepreneurship

8/26/2022 — Nonwage benefits have become increasingly important and now represent 30% of total compensation (BLS, 2021). Using administrative data on health insurance, retirement, and leave benefits, we find dramatically lower within-firm variation in benefits than in wages. We also document sharply higher between-firm variation in nonwage benefits, compared to wages. We argue that this pattern can be a consequence of nondiscrimination regulations and the high administrative burden of managing too many or complex plans

3/1/2018 — On January 18 and 19, 2018, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 100 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

7/7/2020 — We examine the effect of paying higher wages on firm performance during the 2008 financial crisis. To identify variation in wages, we rely on heterogeneity in the timing of long-term wage agreements for a sample of UK firms. We instrument for firms signing long-term agreements overlapping with the crisis by the presence of a contract signed in 2006 or earlier and expiring before September 2008. Treated firms paid higher wages but also realized greater labor productivity relative to control firms. These findings are consistent with the intuition that opportunity cost differentials between treated and control firms induce employees to exert higher effort.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• organizational behavior

9/21/2022 — First, we address the relationship between ownership and employees’ labor outcomes. Second, we present an overview of the literature studying the relationship between capital structure and labor markets, including the implications of financial distress. Third, we connect labor with the fast-growing literature on inequality within firms and investments in technology adoption.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• labor

6/22/2022 — Why do firms offer non-wage compensation instead of the equivalent amount in financial compensation? We argue that firms use nonwage benefits, specifically female-friendly benefits, such as maternity leave, to increase gender diversity by efficiently attracting women.

• KEYWORD(S):
• gender
• inclusion
• inclusive development