FELIX  KOENIG     

We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The approach formalizes the idea that workers respond less to monetary incentives when amenities constitute a larger share of total compensation. Applying this method to workplace safety  during COVID-19 waves, we find that workers are willing to sacrifice 9% of their earnings to reduce weekly fatality risks by one in 100,000. The findings suggest that conventional hedonic regressions substantially underestimate the value of workplace safety.

Paid time off is among the most common and valued workplace amenities. This paper studies the labor market consequences of mandating paid time off. We exploit a German court ruling that required firms in select industries to grant additional paid vacation days to workers under age 30. The mandate led to a clear increase in paid leave but had no adverse effects on wages or employment. Instead, we find evidence suggesting that paid time off can facilitate continued labor market attachment during early parenthood. We show that young mothers return to full-time work sooner when additional paid vacation days are available. 

Employers report hiring difficulties for a wide range of positions. Why don't wages adjust dynamically to clear market demand? We use novel data on posted wages from a near spot market for labor and document that a small minority of firms raise wages when they struggle to fill positions. An RCT with hiring managers investigates potential constraints on wage adjustments by offering hiring managers automated wage-setting systems that are designed to relax alternative wage setting frictions. We find that a majority of firms would use wage-setting systems that automatically raise wages in response to tightening labor markets, with highest demand among those made experimentally aware of Platform’s A/B testing and labor supply tracking. Our results indicate that adjustment costs and information frictions explain why firms increase wages more aggressively with automated wage setting tools than they do manually. We estimate that the availability of automated wage-surge systems would increase wages on hard to fill positions by 4% and raise job fill rates by roughly 10%. A substantial proportion of these gains can be achieved by providing managers with current information on applicants available in their specific hiring market.