Economics

Nabamita Dutta, Economics, and Adam Stivers, Finance, co-authored the article "Females in top management and perceived obstacles by Indian firms—Does economic freedom help?" in "Contemporary Economic Policy" published on March 7 by Wiley. They explore how the combination of economic freedom and perceptions of obstacles (such as corruption, crime, and political instability) may influence the ability for females to reach top levels of management. They find when economic freedom is low, perceptions of obstacles lead to lower probabilities of having women in top management roles. The work reveals that some benefits of economic freedom may depend crucially on perceptions of corruption, crime, and political instability.

Submitted on: Mar. 17

Marissa Eckrote-Nordland, Economics, co-authored the article "Pension Reforms and Personnel Decisions" in "Labour" published on Feb. 25 by Wiley. Eckrote-Nordland and her coauthors use a unique dataset of employment records in Germany to determine if pension reforms in the country that may be costly for employers led employers to decrease hiring or downsize their workforce. While they find that firms with larger shares of older workers tended to decrease hiring, the overall effects on downsizing in the country are very small and statistically insignificant.

Submitted on: Mar. 17

Nabamita Dutta, Economics, co-authored the article "Economic Freedom, Competition and Corruption in India" in Artha Beekshan published on Sept. 1 by the Bengal Economic Association. The authors find that small-to-medium-sized firms in India are less likely to innovate in the face of perceptions of obstacles to accessing finance and perceptions of corruption.

Submitted on: Dec. 10, 2024

Saharnaz Babaei Balderlou, Economics, co-authored the article "Balancing the scale: Investigating the effect of frontloading and backloading salary structures on teacher turnover" in Teaching and Teacher Education published on Oct. 20 by Elsevier. She and her coauthors find statistical evidence that offering higher pay early in a K-12 teacher’s career helps reduce turnover among new teachers, but this strategy is less effective for experienced teachers. They also find risks of increasing turnover if mid-career pay is not competitive, so effective salary structures should seek to balance competitive pay over both early and mid-career.

Submitted on: Oct. 22, 2024

Nabamita Dutta, Economics and Adam Stivers, Finance, co-authored the article "Opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship: Do linguistic structures matter?" in Small Business Economics published on Oct. 18 by Springer. The authors look at how differences in language structure affect international differences in entrepreneurship, distinguishing between necessity entrepreneurship (people pushed into starting businesses due to lack of employment opportunities) and opportunity entrepreneurship (people choosing to leave employment in pursuit of promising opportunities). The language a speaker uses has been shown to influence cognition, behavior, and the content of cultural information shared through time and generations. The authors find statistical evidence that language also influences the pursuit of opportunity entrepreneurship.

Submitted on: Oct. 21, 2024