Research
Working papers
Making the Invisible Hand Visible: Managers and the Allocation of Workers to Jobs
September 2025, Working Paper | [Abstract] | [PDF] | [Supplementary Materials]
Conditionally Accepted, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Coverage: The Visible Hand Podcast, Econimate, The Economist, VoxEU, Marginal Revolution, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal
Best Job Market Paper Award by the European Economic Association and UniCredit Foundation, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Dissertation Award Honorable Mention, AIEL Labor Dissertation Prize, Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics
Abstract: Why do managers matter for firm performance? This paper provides evidence of the critical role of managers in matching workers to jobs within the firm using the universe of personnel records from a large multinational firm. The data covers 200,000 white-collar workers and 30,000 managers over 10 years in 100 countries. I identify good managers as the top 30% by their speed of promotion and leverage exogenous variation induced by the rotation of managers across teams. I find that good managers cause workers to reallocate within the firm through lateral and vertical transfers. This leads to large and persistent gains in workers’ career progression and productivity. Seven years after the manager transition, workers earn 30% more and perform better on objective performance measures. My results imply that the visible hands of managers match workers’ specific skills to specialized jobs, leading to an improvement in the productivity of existing workers that outlasts the managers’ time at the firm.
Meaning at Work
(with Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, and Luigi Zingales)
May 2025, Working Paper | [Abstract] | [PDF]
Revise and Resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Coverage:
The Economist 2024, The Economist 2025, BFI Research Brief, VoxEU Talk, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, BFI The Pie
Abstract: We evaluate a firm’s unusual, worker-centered, solution to the agency problem: enabling employees to reduce the cost of effort rather than pushing them with performance rewards. We randomize the roll-out of the firm’s “Discover Your Purpose” intervention among 2,976 white-collar employees and evaluate their outcomes over two years. We find that performance increases because the low performers either leave the firm or improve in their current jobs. The trade-off between meaning and pay flattens as those with low meaning and high pay leave the firm. Treatment also reshapes stated priorities and reduces gender gaps in preferences and behaviors, including uptake of parental leave. A cost-benefit analysis reveals high returns that are shared between the firm and the employees through higher bonuses. Finally, we show that observational data obscure these gains, causing firms to underestimate the intervention’s true value.
Gender Gaps across the Spectrum of Development: Local Talent and Firm Productivity
(with Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, and Victor Quintas-Martinez)
April 2025, Working Paper |
[Abstract] | [PDF]
Revise and Resubmit, The Review of Economics and Statistics
Coverage: Financial Times, The Economist, The Times, Marginal Revolution
Abstract: We ask whether the gendered division of work affects firm productivity across the spectrum of economic development. Personnel records of over 100,000 individuals hired by a global firm that operates in 100 countries reveal that female employee performance is higher where women are underrepresented in the candidate pool. This implies productivity gains from hiring more women, but realizing them would require increasing women's pay relative to men. The findings highlight how unequal gender norms in local labor markets create an equity-efficiency trade-off inside the firm, particularly in low-income countries with conservative gender norms.
Managers and the Cultural Transmission of Gender Norms
(with Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Heather Sarsons, and Carla Srebot)
January 2026, Working Paper | [Abstract] | [PDF]
Abstract: This paper studies how managers’ gender attitudes shape workplace culture and gender inequality. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we leverage cross-country manager rotations to identify the effects of male managers’ gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes reduce the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), largely through higher promotion rates for women. These effects persist after managers rotate out and are strongest in more conservative countries. Managers with progressive attitudes also influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture.
Reorganizing Work Inside the Firm: Task Change After Technology Adoption
(with Eleonora Brandimarti, Raffaella Sadun, and Jorge Tamayo)
January 2026, Working Paper | [Abstract] | [PDF]
Abstract: We study how an incumbent workforce adapts to technological change using panel data at the worker-task level from a Latin American bank with roughly 450 branches and 10,000 workers. We exploit two sequential interventions that separately shift production technology and organizational design, without displacing labor: the staggered rollout of a mobile banking app that automates routine transactions, and a subsequent redefinition of roles and performance criteria that prioritizes complex tasks such as SME lending. While automation creates substantial productive capacity—raising output per worker by roughly 20 percent—it does not, on its own, lead to task upgrading. Workers continue to concentrate on routine tasks, rather than shifting toward high-value complex tasks. Task reallocation occurs only after the firm explicitly reallocates priorities. Even then, adjustment is markedly slower among high-tenure workers, consistent with firm-specific human capital generating inertia in task change. High-productivity managers complement adaptation, but unevenly: they accelerate upgrading primarily among low-tenure workers, amplifying inequality within teams.
Refereed publications
Leaders in Social Movements: Evidence from Unions in Myanmar
(with Laura Boudreau, Rocco Macchiavello, and Mari Tanaka)
American Economic Review (June 2025), 115(6): 1975-2000 | [Abstract] | [PDF] | [Supplementary Materials]
Coverage: VoxDev Column, J-PAL Summary, Faculti Video, Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business Research Brief, AEA Research Highlight
Abstract: Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members’ views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar’s burgeoning labor movement. Union leaders are positively selected on both personality traits that enable them to influence others and ability but earn lower wages. In group discussions about workers' views on an upcoming national minimum wage negotiation, randomly embedded leaders build consensus around the union’s preferred policy. In an experiment that mimics individual decision-making in a collective action set-up, leaders increase mobilization through coordination. Leaders empower social movements by building consensus that encourages mobilization.
Other publications
New Research on How the Best Managers Shape Employees’ Careers
Harvard Business Review (October 2025) | [Article]
Long-term Unemployment, Volunteering and Re-envisioning the Nature of Work
(with Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, and Martina Zanella)
Nuffield Foundation Public Output (May 2025) | [PDF] | [Article]
Global Managers, Local Workers: Wage Setting Inside a Multinational Firm
AEA Papers & Proceedings (May 2024), 114: 586-91 | [Abstract] | [PDF]
Abstract: How are wages set within a multinational firm? Combining cross-country data on wages and labor regulations with personnel records of a large multinational firm, I find that wage setting depends on the rank of the employee in the firm hierarchy. For managers, wages are set by the headquarters regardless of local labor market conditions. For factory workers, wages are adjusted according to country-specific wages and labor regulations. These results suggest that the multinational's internal labor market shields managers against changes in external market conditions, while the firm adapts to local labor markets for factory workers.
Improving the allocation of talent by enabling Italian women to work
Agenda (Treccani) Article (January 2020) | [Article]
Industrial relations and workplace communication in Myanmar garment sector
(with Min Zar Ni Lin, Mari Tanaka, Hanh Nguyen, Khin Suu Thet, and Rocco Macchiavello)
IGC Working Paper (March 2019), F-53407-MYA-1 | [PDF]