Nondisclosure agreements and externalities from silence
How do contractual restrictions on worker voice affect information flows about employers? We develop a framework in which the legal risk from violating a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) reduces the willingness of workers to share negative information, making it more difficult for high-road employers to differentiate themselves to workers. Empirical support for these ideas comes from studying the relationship between NDA use and the content of Glassdoor reviews after three states prohibited employers from using NDAs to conceal unlawful conduct.
Understanding Firms’ AI Efforts and Their Economic Impact
Our research asks a central question for businesses investing heavily in artificial intelligence: Is AI actually making firms more productive, and if so, how? Using 15 years of data on AI-skilled employment at U.S. public firms, we find that firms increasing their AI investments experienced significantly faster productivity growth from 2018 to 2024—roughly one percentage point of additional productivity growth per year for a one-standard-deviation increase in AI investment. Importantly, these gains do not appear immediately; they build gradually over several years.
An Unattainable Emotional Advantage? Supervisors' Perceptual Biases in the Relationship Between Emotional Understanding Ability and Performance Ratings for Female Employees
Empathy is increasingly valued at workplaces as it facilitates interpersonal relationships, collaboration, and team functioning. Accordingly, organizations increasingly observe and recognize employees' emotional understanding (EU) ability—a key foundation of empathy—as an important dimension of individual merit in performance evaluations. We note that, however, supervisors' gender stereotypes may constrain whether EU ability is recognized properly, particularly for female employees.
The Relative Effects of Design Thinking Versus After-Action Review on Team Performance: An Experiential/Episodic Team Learning Perspective
Learning is key to teamwork success. In a field experiment, a design thinking intervention was shown to promote effective team learning, leading to greater team performance and financial savings. Adopting a learning orientation -- emphasizing hypothesis development and testing foir improving work efficiency - was shown to be is key to teamwork success.
Prompt Adaptation as a Dynamic Complement in Generative AI Systems
As generative-AI models become more powerful, organizations will only realize a portion of that improvement unless users learn to adjust how they interact with the models — prompt-adaptation becomes a critical skill for unlocking full value.
To capture the full benefits of new AI technologies, companies should invest not only in the latest models and infrastructure, but also in user training and workflow design — enabling teams to use the new technologies effectively.
Abortion Restriction Laws and Mobility of Scientists
We track the enactment of targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) laws in the U.S. and analyze 4.98 million person-year mobility records for 535,568 biomedical scientists from 1990 to 2018. Our estimations reveal a 0.8-1.6 percentage-point increase in scientists’ relocation probability after states enacted abortion-restrictive laws, with substantially stronger effects among junior scientists (1.6-3.9 percentage points). Anti-abortion states also became less likely to be chosen as relocation destinations, particularly by higher-quality scientists.
Setting Higher Referral Targets Increases the Number of Women Recommended: Evidence From the Field and Lab
Women continue to be underrepresented in numerous occupations and in the highest echelons of many organizations. This may be due, in part, to disadvantages they face in referral-based hiring and promotion processes. We propose a low-cost and easily scalable intervention to boost referrals of women in male-dominated contexts: requesting a greater target number of referrals (e.g., at least four instead of at least two referrals).
Evolution of Ride Services: From Ride- Hailing to Autonomous Vehicles
In recent years the ride service industry has been evolving rapidly, driven by disruptive technologies such as mobile apps, AI, and autonomous vehicles (AVs). While platform-based decentralized ride hailing companies have gained significant market share, vertically-integrated robotaxi services using emerging AVs are starting to enter the market. In this paper, we aim to provide insights about the evolution and the future of ride services studying these two competing business approaches.