Thursday, 3 January 2008

Review Papers on Personnel Economics

Peter Klein at Organizations and Markets draws our attention to two review papers on Personnel Economics. One is a new NBER working paper by Edward P. Lazear and Paul Oyer entitled Personnel Economics, the other is also an NBER working paper with the title Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources. It is by Lazear and Kathryn Shaw and destined for a future issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Klein comments
These reviews emphasize the generality of the economic approach and argue that it explains observed HR practices, such as the rising variance in pay across individuals, increased use of pay-for-performance schemes, greater reliance on teamwork, and the like better than rival theories.

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