Right for that Job
Interviews
Elliott Ash, Soumitra Shukla & Jason Sockin
Cornell Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
Interviews allow employers to learn about workers, but do they also enable workers to learn about firms? Studying 500,000 interview reports from Glassdoor, we find candidates for high-paying jobs are more likely to reject a job offer if they believe the interview was easy. Easy interviews appear to convey poor "fit" as those who accept offers after easy interviews are two-fifths of a standard deviation less satisfied with their jobs and 10 percent less likely to remain with their employer for at least one year. Analysis of interview narratives using large language models reveals difficult interviews signal colleague ability whereas easy interviews convey a nonselective process. In a small-scale randomized field experiment, an exogenous increase in difficulty elevated perceived difficulty and boosted applicant engagement with the vacancy. Interviews offer workers a preview of match quality, highlighting a channel through which labor markets may become less efficient if firms automate hiring with AI.
Performance pay and job quits
Benjamin Artz & John Heywood
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, November 2025
Abstract:
We use US longitudinal survey data to examine the role of performance pay (other than profit sharing) in worker quit decisions. We argue that performance pay increasingly indicates an internal labor market rather than simply a contemporaneous incentive. Suggestive of this claim, we find that in ever more complete specifications that account for worker and employer characteristics, aggregate earnings, fringe benefits and worker job satisfaction, performance pay is associated with a reduced probability of worker quits. This association remains when including worker fixed effects to control for unmeasured invariant heterogeneity. We investigate how it varies with the type of performance pay and its intensity. We confirm heterogeneity in this association by workplace size.
Unlocking creativity with artificial intelligence (AI): Field and experimental evidence on the Goldilocks (curvilinear) effect of human-AI collaboration
Hsuan-Che (Brad) Huang
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humans create artificial intelligence (AI), but can AI help humans create? Numerous studies show how AI enhances productivity; however, little is known about creativity -- another aspect of performance that requires higher level problem-solving. To understand how AI affects the creative process, I conducted two experiments by assigning 139 business professionals and 319 working adults to collaborate in varying degrees with ChatGPT on an entrepreneurial challenge. In contrast to the well-documented positive correlation between AI usage and productivity and early studies suggesting the same for creativity, the present research shows a Goldilocks (curvilinear) effect: Moderate (vs. low or high) human-AI collaboration increases creative performance. This effect, holding across general creativity rated by human judges (either the crowdsourced public or specific trained individuals), business values by entrepreneurs, and AI-evaluated creativity, is explained by the generation of new diverse ideas (i.e., knowledge diversity) rather than problem restructuring during the brainstorming stage. I further replicate the Goldilocks phenomenon with multisource-multiwave surveys among workers in the creative industries (N = 188). Overall, these findings provide timely insights to the broader public regarding the effective approach to working with AI tools, such as ChatGPT, in daily and professional life. This research emphasizes the importance of striking the right balance -- not too little, not too much -- when working with AI technologies.
Peer Effects and Worker Visibility in Team Production: Evidence from NBA Rookies
Evangelia Chalioti et al.
Yale Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
This paper examines how peer quality impacts early-career visibility, productivity, and longterm earnings in team-based settings. While high-ability peers can generate positive spillovers, they may limit opportunities for less-experienced individuals to showcase their skills, limiting visibility and career progression. Using National Basketball Association (NBA) data, where rookies are quasi-randomly assigned to teams, we find that stronger teams provide less playing time, especially for lower-ranked picks or those competing with star players in the same position. This reduces experience, performance, and future earnings. A theoretical model identifies reduced exposure as the key mechanism, with broader implications for team-based industries where early exposure shapes career paths.
The Value of Internal Labor Markets: Evidence from LinkedIn Profiles and U.S. Inventors
Letian Zhang & Simeng Wang
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper proposes a new measure for an organization's internal career ladder. Analyzing job-to-job movements in LinkedIn profiles, we measure the extent to which an organization relies on internal versus external hiring. We then use this newly constructed measure to revisit the classic sociological question about the value of internal labor markets. Matching LinkedIn profiles of 446,058 U.S. inventors and tracking their performance from 2000 to 2025, we find that inventors are more productive when their employers have higher rates of internal promotion. However, this pattern largely disappears among inventors nearing the end of their careers, suggesting the importance of career advancement incentives. This study leverages LinkedIn data to provide new evidence on the value of internal labor markets.
Competing for Its Own Sake: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Competition
Jiarui Wang
Boston University Working Paper, November 2025
Abstract:
Economists often view competition as a means to motivate effort, improve efficiency, and therefore enhance welfare. However, this instrumental perspective may overlook that competition itself can directly influence individuals' welfare. This paper investigates how competition affects utility derived solely from the act of competing, independent of material outcomes. I conduct a series of experiments which show that competition affects utility through two opposing channels: a belief channel, in which competition lowers expectations of success and reduces utility; and a preference channel, through which individuals derive enjoyment directly from competing. The preference channel dominates, resulting in a net positive impact on utility. I further show that these welfare effects influence future choices: competition induces attribution bias, leading individuals to misattribute the enjoyment of competition to the underlying task and increase their willingness to engage in it again, even in the absence of competition. These effects also extend to social interactions, reducing post-competition zero-sum thinking and fostering altruism.
Welcome, stranger
Jian Bai Li & Henning Piezunka
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
How can organizations establish collaboration between their established members and a newly hired member? We address this question by studying firms undergoing scaling using a multiple-case study. We find that widely involving the new hire into the established managers' activities backfires. Such extensive involvement is intended to build the same kind of strong, personal relationships with the new hire that the established managers share amongst themselves and, in doing so, establish collaboration. But the established managers' relationships turn out to be irreplicable. Being extensively involved without possessing the same kind of relationships, the new hire becomes perceived as an intruder. In contrast, involving the new hire more selectively led to the new hire becoming respected as a relationally distant but professionally appreciated "stranger," which engendered effective collaboration.
Fraud at a Distance? How Remote Work Shapes Financial Misconduct
John Barrios, Jessie Jianwen Guo & Yanping Zhu
NBER Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
Financial misconduct is often a team activity, facilitated by face-to-face interactions, shared norms, and trust. We exploit the sudden shift to remote work during COVID-19 to examine how workplace organization shapes collusion and financial misconduct. Using a novel firm-level measure of work-from-home feasibility, we find that firms that are more able to operate remotely experienced large post-2020 declines in misconduct. This decline is found across multiple misreporting proxies and is robust to various alternative measures of remote work. Cross-sectional tests indicate stronger declines in teamwork-intensive firms, firms with effective internal controls, and firms with weaker pre-COVID employee perceptions of culture and leadership. Overall, our findings reflect that financial misconduct is a team activity, sensitive to the organizational structure of the firm, with important implications for governance and organizational design.
Heterogeneity in What Motivates: Employee Preference Variation and Incentive Design
Susanna Gallani
Harvard Working Paper, October 2025
Abstract:
Organizations increasingly recognize that identical incentives do not motivate all employees equally, yet little is known about the extent of heterogeneity in what people value and whether such heterogeneity can be predicted. This study provides direct empirical evidence on individual variation in motivator preferences and examines how preference alignment relates to job satisfaction, motivation, and feeling valued. I surveyed 1,001 employed adults in the United States using a validated instrument that asks respondents to rank nine financial and non-financial motivators, to indicate whether their experiences meet, exceed, or fall short of expectations, and allows me to classify each motivator as a motivator, hygienic factor, attractor, or irrelevancy. The results reveal substantial heterogeneity: no single motivator dominates, and respondents exhibit sixty-seven unique combinations of top motivators. Demographic and employment characteristics-gender, age, education, experience, and work status-explain less than one percent of the variance in motivator rankings or classifications, confirming that observable traits are poor predictors of what motivates individuals. By contrast, the degree to which employees' top motivators are met or exceeded explains between 17 and 28 percent of the variance in job satisfaction, motivation, and feeling valued. The explanatory power of alignment is thus orders of magnitude larger than that of demographics. These findings demonstrate that motivation is highly individualized and that aligning incentives with employees' stated preferences offers greater potential for improving satisfaction and motivation than demographic segmentation or standardized incentive design.