About

I'm an Associate Professor in the Work and Organizations Group at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. My research is in personnel economics. I work with companies to analyze HR-related topics like hiring, promotions, performance evaluation, and compensation. My work has

Research topics

• Economics
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Data Mining
• Demographic economics
• Marketing
• Labour economics
• Sociology
• Business
• Biology
• Art
• Law
• Microeconomics
• Finance
• Mathematics
• Social psychology
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• “Potential” and the Gender Promotion Gap

  American Economic Review · 2026-01-30 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We show that subjective assessments of employee “potential” contribute to gender gaps in promotion and pay. Using data on 29,809 management-track employees from a large retail chain, we find that women receive substantially lower potential ratings despite receiving higher performance ratings. Differences in potential ratings account for approximately half of the gender promotion gap. Women’s lower potential ratings do not reflect accurate forecasts of future performance: Women subsequently outperform male colleagues, both on average and on the margin of promotion. We highlight two mechanisms driving the gender potential gap: strategic retention and stereotyping. (JEL J16, J31, J71, L81, M12, M51)

  PublisherDOI

• What Do Managers Do? An Economist's Perspective

  Annual Review of Economics · 2025-06-11 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Economic activity requires motivating and coordinating individuals to work toward a common goal. These aims are the purview of managers. What, however, do managers actually do? We outline three defining principles of economic research on managers—technological determinism, skill distinction, and managerial self-interest—and relate them to the set of skills reported by managers on LinkedIn. We highlight “managers of people” and “managers of projects” as a useful distinction for categorizing theoretical, empirical, and descriptive accounts of managers. In light of our three principles, we review research on how managers can create value—namely, by hiring, retaining, training, monitoring, evaluating, allocating, and supervising. We propose that managers apply these skills in different proportions depending on the production technology in which they are embedded and that research on managers should seek to produce generalizable insights by exploring managers’ contributions in different contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• What Do Managers Do? An Economist's Perspective

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Economic activity, when sufficiently ambitious, requires motivating and coordinating individuals to work toward a common goal.These aims are the purview of managers.What, however, do managers actually do?We outline three defining principles of economic research on managers and relate them to the set of skills reported by managers on LinkedIn.We highlight "managers of people" and "managers of projects" as a useful distinction for categorizing theoretical, empirical, and descriptive accounts of managers.In light of our three principles, we review research on how managers can create value-namely, by hiring, retaining, training, monitoring, evaluating, allocating, and supervising.We propose that managers apply these skills in different proportions depending on the production technology in which they are embedded and that research on managers should seek to produce generalizable insights by exploring managers' contributions in different contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• New Insights from Career Histories: Advancement, Diversity, and Social Performance

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  Novel large-scale, individual-level career history data have opened up new ways to study workforce composition, leadership trajectories, and organizational outcomes. This symposium presents four studies that use these data to examine how both external events and internal organizational conditions shape opportunity and diversity within firms. One study finds that while the Black Lives Matter movement leads to a short-term increase in the hiring of junior Black employees, this effect fades quickly, raising questions about lasting change. Another shows that women are less likely than men to present themselves as leaders on professional platforms, and that this gap is predicted by local social norms, suggesting that societal and organizational factors influence how individuals display their qualifications. A third paper identifies how organizational features cause underrepresented groups to use internal and external mobility differently than majority group members. A final paper explores the career histories of executives with government experience, finding that these executives may instill a mission mindset in firms, increasing their social performance. Together, these papers use newly available career data to offer evidence on where differences in opportunities persist, how leadership pipelines evolve, and how larger societal contexts play a role. This symposium underscores the potential of rich career history data to deepen our understanding of careers, organizations, and the broader social forces that shape them. BLM Movement and Workplace Racial Inequality Author: Simeng Wang; Columbia Business School Author: Letian Zhang; Harvard Business School Author: Yoongjae Shin; Harvard Business School Mission Mindset in the Upper Echelon Author: Forrest Briscoe; Cornell University Author: Thomas John Fewer; Rutgers University When do women present themselves as leaders? Author: Alan M. Benson; University of Minnesota Premium or Penalty? Differential Effects of Gender and Race on Promotions Author: Nathan Barrymore; McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin

  PublisherDOI

• What Do Managers Do? An Economist's Perspective

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ability, Visibility, or Credibility? Occupational Category Spanning with Profile-Based Matching

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  The use of online profiles generates new matching opportunities by making worker information public. Workers use occupational labels to signal their expertise concisely. Under this context, workers may attempt to increase their employability by affiliating with multiple occupational categories. While the signaling strategy can be successful by extending the pool of potential recruiters, it may also cause negative reactions due to its lack of focus. The study approaches the dilemma by applying categorization theory from economic sociology. We hypothesize that claiming multiple categories may increase the attention workers receive but decrease their credibility. To test the mechanisms, the study exploits an exogenous change of category visibility in a South Korean job-matching platform. The platform suddenly deleted occupational categories from the user list without prior announcements. The results show that category spanners received greater profile views but fewer interview offers when the occupational affiliations were visible. The decoupling of attention and legitimacy challenges the traditional idea that inattention to category spanners drives the social penalty. The study concludes with implications for the online labor market, platform design, and boundaryless career literature.

  PublisherDOI

• What do managers do? *

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• When do women present themselves as leaders? <br>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Potential and the Gender Promotions Gap

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from Retail Sales

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2023 · 34 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Econometrics

  Abstract We propose a simple model of racial bias in hiring that encompasses three major theories: taste-based discrimination, screening discrimination, and complementary production. We derive a test that can distinguish these theories based on the mean and variance of workers’ productivity under managers of different pairs of races. We apply this test to study discrimination at a major U.S. retailer using data from 48,755 newly hired commission-based salespeople. White, black, and Hispanic managers within the same store are significantly more likely to hire workers of their own race, consistent with all three theories. For black–Hispanic pairs, productivity variance is lower for same-race pairs than cross-race pairs, implying that screening discrimination dominates. For white–Hispanic pairs, mean productivity is higher for same-race pairs, indicating a combination of screening discrimination and complementary production. For white–black pairs, biased hiring implies the presence of discrimination, but productivity results suggest the effects of the three forms of discrimination offset one another.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Danielle Li

  49 shared

• Kelly Shue

  Yale University

  49 shared

• Aaron Sojourner

  W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

  14 shared

• Kelly Shue

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  13 shared

• Sima Sajjadiani

  12 shared

• Nial Friel

  11 shared

• Danielle Li

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  8 shared

• Akhmed Umyarov

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• Mary and Jim Lawrence Fellowship (2021)
• Carlson School of Management Teaching Award (2020)
• Herbie Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020)
• Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award and grant (2019…
• Best paper award at Center for Economic and Policy Research…