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Using data from O ∗ NET, we construct two measures of an occupation’s potential exposure to social distancing measures: (i) the ability to conduct that job from home and (ii) the degree of physical proximity to others the job requires. After validating these measures with comparable measures from ATUS as well as realized work-from-home rates during the pandemic, we employ the measures to study the characteristics of workers in these types of jobs. Our results show that workers in low-work-from-home and high-physical-proximity jobs are more economically vulnerable across various measures constructed from the CPS and PSID: they are less educated, of lower income, have fewer liquid assets relative to income, and are more likely renters. Consistent with the idea that high physical proximity or low work-from-home occupations were more exposed to the Coronavirus shock, we show that the types of workers predicted to be employed in them experienced greater declines in employment during the pandemic. We conclude by comparing the aggregate employment losses in these occupations to their employment losses in the 2008 recession, and find evidence that these occupations were disproportionately exposed to the pandemic shock, and not just comprised of more cyclically sensitive workers.

This paper builds a new microdatabase that covers 100 countries at all income levels and long-run time series in the United States (1870– 2010) and Mexico (1960– 2010) to document how the modern tax system arises over development. I establish a new set of stylized facts, which show that the income tax exemption threshold decreases in the income distribution as a country develops, tracking growth in the employee share of employment that occurs gradually further down the income distribution. Additional evidence supports the interpretation that the rise in third-party covered income through increases in employee share drives expansions of the income tax base over development.

This paper considers the use of instruments to identify and estimate private and social returns to education within a model of employer learning. What an instrument identifies depends on whether it is hidden from, or transparent (i.e., observed ) to, the employers. A hidden instrument identifies private returns to education, and a transparent instrument identifies social returns to education. We use variation in compulsory schooling laws across noncentral and central municipalities in Norway to, respectively, construct hidden and transparent instruments. We estimate a private return of 7.9 percent, of which 70 percent is due to increased productivity and the remaining 30 percent is due to signaling.

The nullification of slave wealth after the US Civil War (1861–1865) was one of the largest episodes of wealth compression in history. We document that White Southern households that owned more slaves in 1860 lost substantially more wealth by 1870, relative to Southern households that had been equally wealthy before the war. Yet, their sons almost entirely recovered from this wealth shock by 1900, and their grandsons completely converged by 1940. Marriage networks and connections to other elite families may have aided in recovery, whereas transmission of entrepreneurship and skills appear less central.

Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan. Four years after hire, automatic enrollmentincreases cumulative contributions to the plan by 4.1% of annual salary, but we find little evidence ofincreased financial distress. Automatic enrollment causes no significant change in credit scores, debt balances excluding auto debt and first mortgages, or adverse credit outcomes, with the possible exception of increasedfirst-mortgage balances in foreclosure.

This paper analyzes how labor market factors have shaped early returns on big data investment using a new data source-the LinkedIn skills database. The data source enables firm-level measurement of the employment of workers with technical skills such as Hadoop, MapReduce, and Apache Pig. From 2006 to 2011, Hadoop investments were associated with 3% faster productivity growth, but only for firms (a) with significant data assets and (b) in labor markets where similar investments by other firms helped to facilitate the development of a cadre of workers with complementary technical skills. The benefits of labor market concentration decline for investments in mature data technologies, such as Structured Query Language-based databases, for which the complementary skills can be acquired by workers through universities or other channels. These findings underscore the importance of geography, corporate investment, and skill acquisition channels for explaining productivity growth differences during the spread of new information technology innovations. This paper was accepted by Alok Gupta, special issue on business analytics .

In contrast to previous efforts to model an individual's movement from wage work into entrepreneurship, we consider that individuals might transition incrementally by retaining their wage job while entering into self-employment. We show that these hybrid entrepreneurs represent a significant share of all entrepreneurial activity. Theoretical arguments are proposed to suggest why hybrid entrants are distinct from self-employment entrants, and why hybrid entry may facilitate subsequent entry into full self-employment. We demonstrate that there are significant theoretical and empirical consequences for this group and our understanding of self-employment entry and labor market dynamics. Using matched employee-employer data over eight years, we test the model on a population of Swedish wage earners in the knowledge-intensive sector.

Acritical omission in the coworker influence literature is how a coworker influences a closely related (focal) employee’s job performance behaviors and whether this influence is contingent on that coworker’s own behaviors. By integrating social information processing and social cognitive theories with social exchange and role theories, we hypothesize that there are, at least, three distinct types of coworker dyadic influence. Accordingly, we developed and tested a moderated mediation model to explicate such influence. Two multisource, field-design studies conducted in Hong Kong support the modeled relationships in that employee role ambiguity partially mediated the relationships between coworker–employee exchange and two types of employee job performance behaviors—task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Furthermore, coworker OCB fostered employee job performance behavior both directly and interactively, acting as a moderator to weaken the relationships between employee role ambiguity and the two types of job performance behaviors.

At small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), cash-strapped employees frequently request loans from employers because they cannot obtain money on reasonable terms elsewhere for exigent needs. In turn, employers decide whether to lend the money through formal (i.e., written, contractual) loans or more informal \"off-the-book\" (OTB) loans. Our exploration of this understudied source of credit unearths important questions about the reasons employers lend money to employees, the manner in which they decide to make formal or informal loans, and the coveted benefits employers derive from lending to their workers. Considering the pervasiveness and significance of loan choices among small firms, and the absence of studies on the topic, we tackle these questions through an analysis of 459 informal and formal loans issued by 83 small business owners to their employees. The results show that the issuance of OTB loans is a key tactic for employers to manage resource dependencies with valued workers.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to empirically examine how individuals’ hybrid entrepreneurial venturing activities (HEVA) influence key characteristics associated with one’s wage work, namely creativity and job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThrough a cross-sectional self-administered survey design, data were gathered from 465 US-based useable responses via Amazon Mechanical Turk and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsFindings show individuals reporting higher levels of HEVA – such as creating, founding, starting or running – tend to also exhibit higher levels of creativity and job satisfaction in their workplaces. Findings further reveal that income negatively moderates the relationship between creativity and wage work job satisfaction.Practical implicationsBy providing a better understanding of how engaging in HEVA can impact creativity and job satisfaction, this study has important implications for (1) managers seeking to influence key employee outcomes and (2) employees considering such entrepreneurial activities.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the growing scholarly and practitioner interest in hybrid entrepreneurship and its outcomes. Specifically, the paper adds new insights regarding how engaging in HEVA can influence individual skills (i.e. creativity) or organizational goals (i.e. employee job satisfaction). In doing so, the paper also uses insights from the intrinsic/extrinsic motivation literature to suggest how extrinsic motivators (such as income) can interact with intrinsically motivated behaviors (such as creativity) in influencing employee outcomes in wage work. Finally, the paper contributes to the growing interest in applying the empowerment perspective within entrepreneurship research by exploring where and how empowerment may occur.