I currently work at the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health. My primary research interests lie in personnel, experimental, health and environmental economics and industrial organisation, with a particular expertise in applied econometrics.
Publications
"Dynamic Incentive Effects of Assignment Mechanisms: Experimental Evidence" (with Thomas Gall and Michael Vlassopoulos), J Econ Manage Strat. 2019; 1–26. download pdf
Optimal assignment and matching mechanisms have been the focus of exhaustive analysis. We focus on their dynamic effects, which have received less attention, especially in the empirical literature: Anticipating that assignment is based on prior performance may affect prior performance. We test this hypothesis in a lab experiment. Participants first perform a task individually without monetary incentives; in a second stage, they are paired with another participant according to a pre-announced assignment policy. The assignment is based on the first-stage performance, and compensation is determined by average performance. Our results are largely consistent with a theory: Pairing the worst-performing individuals with the best yields 20% lower first-stage effort than random matching (RAM) and does not induce truthful revelation of types, which undoes any policy that aims to reallocate types based on performance. Perhaps surprisingly, however, pairing the best with the best yields only 5% higher first-stage effort than RAM and the difference is not statistically significant.
Working Papers
"Subjective Performance Evaluation in a Multi-tasking Environment: a Firm-level Experiment in China" (with Thomas Gall and Michael Vlassopoulos) download pdf
We examine a multitasking problem where one task is to produce private goods while the other is to create public goods which is hard to measure. Such problems can be found in organisations that make use of multitasking leaders. Group leaders take responsibility for organising teams (public goods) and contribute as a member (private goods). Presenting evidence from a natural field experiment, we shed light on the impact of a high-powered remuneration system regarding leaders’ organisa- tional behaviours. In particular, we designed a monitoring system which subjectively evaluates leaders’ organisational inputs, and we offered each leader a new bonus scheme that is depending on her relative performance in organising teams among other group leaders within the factory. Using individual daily production records, we find an overall 6% increase in workers’ productivity, excluding the leaders. In line with our theoretical model, strengthening incentives on organising teams does not necessarily have a negative impact on leaders’ production performance. We show that leaders’ production performances increase as they invest more time on the job.
This paper studies both non-monetary and monetary determinants of mentoring relationships between managers and employees in British firms by using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey. In particular, I focus on the role of a manager's gender and the use of managerial incentive schemes. Past literature suggests a significant association between a manager's gender and mentoring behaviour. However, using longitudinal data this paper finds that the significant relationship disappears once firm fixed effects are included. The results also show a positive but weak association between managerial incentive schemes and managers' mentoring behaviour. Widespread mentorships are more likely to be found in firms where managers' payments are linked to organisational profits.
"Conflict and Choice of Study at University Level: Evidence from Pakistan" (with Abbas Gillani) download pdf
Exposure to violence has long lasting detrimental effects on educational outcomes. By using university level admissions data between 2014-16 from Pakistan, this paper explores the differential in preference for degree choices of students who live in conflict-affected areas compared to students who live in conflict-free areas. By using a pooled OLS estimation and instrumenting for occurrence of conflict in a district to the distance of each district to the militant’s stronghold, we find that when students are exposed to conflict in the time period from primary school up till high school, students living in conflict-affected districts are 39 per cent less likely to apply to a mathematics pre-requisite degree when compared to students living in conflict-free districts. Similarly, when students are exposed to conflict in high school, those who live in conflict-affected districts are 10 per cent less likely to apply to a mathematics pre-requisite degree.