This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. ASSA Annual Meeting
  3. 2024
  4. Program
  5. Employee Decision Experiments
« Back to Results

Employee Decision Experiments

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (CST)

Convention Center, 225B
Hosted By: American Economic Association
  • Chair: Anne Marie Knott, Washington University-St Louis

Do Employees Value the Right to Sue Their Employers

Anne Marie Knott
,
Washington University-St Louis

Abstract

The Civil Rights Act of 1999 intended to increase opportunities for protected groups by lowering thresholds and increasing penalties for employment discrimination. Because this increased litigation costs, employers responded by incorporating Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) clauses in employment contracts (from 2% of contracts in 1991 to 56% in 2017). Portions of the legal community are outraged by this growth, because ADR clauses limit employees’ ability to enforce statutory employment rights. This paper asks whether employees share that outrage--do they value the right to sue their employer? We attempt to answer that question through an online experiment in which subjects choose between jobs with differing characteristics. By comparing their preferences across jobs we find that on average willingness to pay (WTP) for an ADR clause is -4.3% of salary. However, there is substantial variance in WTP, including subjects with positive WTP. Qualitative comments suggest those who prefer ADR clauses find litigation to be onerous and to have later career consequences.

Dating and Breaking Up with the Boss: Benefits, Costs, and Spillovers

David Macdonald
,
University of British Columbia-Okanagan
Jerry Montonen
,
Aalto University
Emily Elizabeth Nix
,
University of Southern California

Abstract

We find large labor market impacts of dating and breaking up with one's manager. Effects are much more muted for workplace relationships between equals. We also explore spillovers on the broader workforce.

Monitoring Harassment in Organizations

Laura Boudreau
,
Columbia University
Sylvain Chassang
,
Princeton University
Ada Gonzalez-Torres
,
Ben-Gurion University
Rachel Heath
,
University of Washington

Abstract

We evaluate secure survey methods designed for the ongoing monitoring of harassment in organizations. We use the resulting data to answer policy relevant questions about the nature of harassment: How prevalent is it? What share of managers is responsible for the misbehavior? How isolated are its victims? To do so, we partner with a large Bangladeshi garment manufacturer to experiment with different designs of phone-based worker surveys. Garbling responses to sensitive questions by automatically recording a random subset as complaints increases reporting of physical harassment by 288%, sexual harassment by 269%, and threatening behavior by 46%. A rapport-building treatment has an insignificant aggregate effect, but may affect men and women differently. Removing team identifiers from survey responses does not significantly increase reporting and prevents the computation of policy-relevant team-level statistics. The resulting data shows that harassment is widespread, that the problem is not restricted to a minority of managers, and that victims are often isolated in teams.

Discussant(s)
Jason Sockin
,
IZA
JEL Classifications
  • J0 - General
  • M5 - Personnel Economics