About

Professor Fidan Ana Kurtulus is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research explores a number of topics in labor economics, including the organization of workers within firms, participatory workplace practices, employee ownership, workplace diversity, and the long-term effects of affirmative action legislation on the U.S. employment landscape since the Civil Rights Movement. She has held various fellowships and research positions, including the Wertheim Fellowship at Harvard Law School, the Women and Public Policy Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and research roles at Boston University, Rutgers University, and Cornell University. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University and a B.A. in Economics from The University of Chicago. Her work has been published in prominent journals and she has contributed to books on employee ownership and employment stability. She has also received numerous awards and grants, such as the Women and Public Policy Fellow, the Joseph Cabral Distinguished Fellowship, and grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Her research has significantly contributed to understanding the impact of affirmative action, employee ownership, and workplace diversity on employment outcomes, stability, and occupational advancement.

Research topics

• Business
• Labour economics
• Demographic economics
• Economics
• Political science

Selected publications

• <p>Employee Share Ownership, Management Practices, and Labor Productivity: An Analysis Using Establishment Level Micro-Data from the U.S. Census</p>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Racially Disparate Effects of the Japan Trade Shock: The Role of Occupational Exposure

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Examining the Effect of Wrongful Discharge Laws on Women's Occupational Employment

  Labour · 2025-02-06 · 3 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Previous empirical literature on US wrongful discharge laws, a judicial form of employment protection, has identified ways in which these policies have changed employers' hiring and firing practices, but has lacked a systematic analysis of the impact on workplace gender composition. This paper is the first to investigate the impact of state adoption of wrongful discharge laws on occupational gender diversity within American workplaces. We use restricted establishment‐level longitudinal data that are uniquely suited for the analysis of this topic obtained from the United States. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEO‐1 Employer Information Reports). We utilize difference‐in‐differences regression methodology to first estimate the overall impact of wrongful discharge laws, and then examine the dynamics of wrongful discharge law impacts using event study regressions. We then examine the interplay between state wrongful discharge laws and state gender employment discrimination laws in shaping female employment composition at workplaces. First, we find that the adoption of one wrongful discharge law in particular, the good faith doctrine, is associated with an increase in women's employment share in laborer jobs within private‐sector establishments of 0.80 percentage points, and that this is a causal impact given the pattern of yearly impacts found using our event study analysis. Our findings suggest that the good faith doctrine has facilitated reduction in barriers women have historically faced in blue‐collar jobs. Second, while we find that the good faith doctrine is associated with a statistically significant increase in the share of women in officer and managerial jobs, and that the public policy doctrine is associated with a significant rise in women's share of professional jobs, our event study results cast doubt that these are causal impacts. Finally, our exploration of the interaction between state wrongful discharge laws and state gender discrimination laws reveals that, generally, state gender discrimination laws neither amplify nor diminish the impact of wrongful discharge laws on women's occupational employment within establishments.

  PublisherDOI

• Do Women Top Managers Help Women Advance? A Panel Study Using EEO-1 Records

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-09-20 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The goal of this study is to examine whether women in the highest levels of management ranks of firms help reduce barriers to advancement in the workplace faced by women. Using a panel of over 20,000 private-sector firms across all industries and states during 1990-2003 from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, we explore the influence of women in top management on subsequent female representation in lower-level managerial positions in U.S. firms. Our key findings show that an increase in the share of female top managers is associated with subsequent increases in the share of women in mid-level management positions within firms, and this result is robust to controlling for firm size, workforce composition, federal contractor status, firm fixed effects, year fixed effects and industry-specific trends. The influence of women in top management positions is stronger among federal contractors, in firms with larger female labor forces, and for white women. We also find that the positive influence of women in top leadership positions on managerial gender diversity diminishes over time, suggesting that women at the top play a positive but transitory role in women’s career advancement.

  PublisherDOI

• Worker Attitudes Towards Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and Variable Pay

  ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-09-20 · 7 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Using the NBER Shared Capitalism Database comprised of over 40,000 employee surveys from 14 firms, we investigate worker attitudes towards employee ownership, profit sharing, and variable pay. Specifically, our study uses detailed survey questions on preferences over profit sharing, forms of employee ownership like company stock and stock option ownership, as well as preferences over variable pay in general, to explore how preferences for these different types of output-contingent pay vary with worker risk aversion, residual control, and views of co-workers and management. Our key results show that, on average, workers want at least a part of their compensation to be performance-related, with stronger preferences for output-contingent pay schemes among workers who have lower levels of risk aversion, greater residual control over the work process, and greater trust of co-workers and management

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Empirical Analysis of Risk Preferences, Compensation Risk, and Employee Outcomes

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-09-20 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We use the NBER Shared Capitalism Database comprised of more than 40,000 employee surveys from 14 firms to explore whether a close match between workers’ risk preferences and the riskiness of their compensation packages relates to improved employee outcomes including lower absenteeism, lower shirking, lower probability of voluntary turnover, greater worker motivation, and higher levels of job satisfaction and loyalty. To do this, we use survey questions reflecting workers’ risk aversion parameters, coupled with a series of measures of the riskiness of workers’ compensation packages including the proportion of pay comprised of various forms of shared capitalism such as profit and gain sharing, ownership of company stock, and bonus arrangements. The primary finding of our paper is that a match between the workers’ risk preferences and the extent of risk in their compensation increases workers’ motivation, job satisfaction, company attachment, and loyalty, but risk-averse workers are generally less responsive to a preference-compensation match than risk-loving workers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The color of law: the forgotten history of how our government segregated America

  Labor History · 2018-10-30 · 148 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Richard Rothstein makes a convincing case for how federal, state, and local laws and policies, distinct from actions of private citizens and organizations, enabled the creation and perpetuation of ...

  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of Employee Ownership on Employment Stability and Firm Survival During the Past Two Recessions

  Employment Research · 2017-01-01 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How did employee ownership firms weather the last two recessions? employee ownership, employment stability, and firm survival : 1999-2011

  2017-01-01 · 11 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Employee ownership firms offer workers the opportunity to own a stake in the firms where they work. This affords them the ability to share in profits and have a voice in firm-related decision-making. In this comprehensive new book, Kurtulus and Kruse provide new evidence on whether employee ownership firms are better equipped to survive recessions. In particular, they focus on broad-based employee ownership, which includes ownership at all levels in the firm’s hierarchy.

• How Did Employee Ownership Firms Weather the Last Two Recessions? Employee Ownership, Employment Stability, and Firm Survival: 1999-2011

  2017-01-16 · 69 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Employee ownership firms offer workers the opportunity to own a stake in the firms where they work. This affords them the ability to share in profits and have a voice in firm-related decision-making. In this comprehensive new book, Kurtulus and Kruse provide new evidence on whether employee ownership firms are better equipped to survive recessions. In particular, they focus on broad-based employee ownership, which includes ownership at all levels in the firm’s hierarchy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Douglas Kruse

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  18 shared

• Donald Tomaskovic‐Devey

  5 shared

• Jed DeVaro

  5 shared

• Joseph R. Blasi

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  4 shared

• Jed DeVaro

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Early Career Research Award, Upjohn Institute for Employment…
• Chancellor's Junior Faculty Fellow, University of Massachuse…
• J. Robert Beyster Fellow, Rutgers University (2009-2010)
• Cornell University Fellowship (2002-2008)
• National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Competition…