IZA World of Labor - Jan Sauermann

Jan Sauermann

Stockholm University, Sweden, IZA, Germany, and Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), the Netherlands

I’m excited to contribute to the IZA World of Labor series. In my view, the articles provide a great opportunity for policymakers, researchers, and students to get an evidence-based, yet non-technical introduction to policy-relevant topics

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Assistant Professor, Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, Sweden

Research interest

Applied labor economics, economics of education, personnel economics, economics of gender, field experiments

Website

https://sites.google.com/site/jansauermann/

Past positions

Researcher, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht University, the Netherlands

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Maastricht University, 2013

Selected publications

“Referee bias.” Journal of Economic Surveys (Forthcoming) (with T. Dohmen).
“The role of peers in estimating tenure-performance profiles: Evidence from personnel data.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 126 (2016): 39–54 (with A. De Grip and I. Sieben).
“The effects of training on own and co-worker productivity: Evidence from a field experiment.” Economic Journal 122:560 (2012): 376–399 (with A. De Grip).
“What affects international migration of science and engineering graduates from Europe?” Economics of Innovation and New Technology 19:5 (2010): 407–421 (with A. De Grip and D. Fouarge).
“What makes a good conference? Analysing the preferences of labour economists” Labour Economics 17:5 (2010): 868-874 (with L. Borghans and M. Romans).

- Education and human capital
- Data and methods
Performance measures and worker productivity

Choosing the right performance measures can inform and improve decision-making in policy and management

Jan Sauermann, May 2016

Measuring workers’ productivity is important for public policy and private-sector decision-making. Due to a lack of reliable methods to determine workers’ productivity, firms often use specific performance measures, such as how different incentives affect employees’ behavior. The public sector also uses these measures to monitor and evaluate personnel, such as teachers. To select the right performance measures, and as a result design better employment contracts and improve productivity, policymakers and managers need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the available metrics.
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