Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2716-2328

Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Chambers College of Business and Economics

Department

Economics

Committee Chair

Brad Humphreys

Committee Member

Feng Yao

Committee Member

Palak Suri

Committee Member

Alan Benson

Abstract

Labor market dynamics are not only relevant for worker welfare, but also matter for firm productivity. This dissertation investigates the dynamic interactions between firms and workers, with a particular focus on the determinants and effects of human resources management practices. Using professional sports labor markets as a natural laboratory, I examine three distinct but interconnected mechanisms: managers, hiring decisions, and contract setting.

The first chapter studies how managers matter for worker productivity by exploiting manager moves in Major League Baseball. I first show that manager effects are primarily match-specific using an AKM-type model. Then, staggered difference-in-differences results show positive effects of shared characteristics, including same position, both lefties, and same hometown. Effects of same position and both lefties are larger than same hometown. Effects are more pronounced for younger and less productive workers, indicating that mentoring is the primary mechanism while in-group bias is secondary. Finally, there is suggestive evidence that a manager’s productivity as a worker is not a positive characteristic.

The second chapter analyzes firm hiring decisions under uncertainty about worker pro ductivity. We exploit an exogenous September 15 cutoff date in the National Hockey League entry draft to estimate a sharp RDD and find evidence of risk aversion by teams when draft ing players. Specifically, teams appear risk averse in early draft rounds, but risk neutral in later rounds, supporting model predictions in a prior study. Triple-difference-in-differences results show inaccurate relative-age-based statistical discrimination in the draft, providing implications for team drafting strategies. We find suggestive evidence that experience drives this discrimination, and positive correlation between accuracy of statistical discrimination and team success.

The third chapter first establishes that among National Hockey League player contracts signed from 2011-24, over 38% are divisible by $100,000. I show that the bunching of contracts at round numbers is partly driven by teams’ coarse contract-setting. Teams with more coarse contracts have worse performance. Then, I test predictions from a wage-setting model where optimization costs cause contract rounding. With two measures of management quality, I document a negative relationship between management quality and coarse contract setting. Next, I find that coarse contract-setting is associated with higher pay inequality. Finally, I do not identify spillover effects of changes in minimum salaries on coarse contract setting.

The findings demonstrate that both firm risk preferences and optimization costs can determine human resources management practices, and that human resources management practices can have sizable effects on worker and firm productivity. This dissertation con tributes to the literature on personnel and labor economics by providing evidence on the effects of managers, risk preferences and discrimination in hiring decisions, and firm coarse contract-setting behavior. The results offer important implications for human resources management, ranging from selecting managers to hiring decisions and contract setting.

Download

Share

COinS