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Kerry L. Papps

University of Bath, UK, and IZA, Germany

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to IZA World of Labor. Economic research can be impenetrable at times, so it's crucial to have a forum where its findings are put in context and viewed through a policy lens

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Senior Lecturer, University of Bath, UK

Research interest

Labor supply decisions of married women, the assimilation experiences of immigrants, optimal team construction in major league baseball and the disemployment effects of different policies that raise labor costs

Website

https://people.bath.ac.uk/klp33/

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Consultant to UK Low Pay Commission

Past positions

Postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Economics and Nuffield College, Oxford; research analyst at the New Zealand Department of Labour

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Cornell University, USA

Selected publications

  • "The transmission of women’s fertility, human capital and work orientation across immigrant generations." Journal of Population Economics 26:2 (2013): 405–435 (with F. D. Blau, L. M. Kahn, and A. Y.-H. Liu).

  • "The effects of social security taxes and minimum wages on employment: Evidence from Turkey." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 65:3 (2012): 686–707.

  • "Heterogeneous worker ability and team-based production: Evidence from major league baseball, 1920–2009." Labour Economics 18:3 (2011): 310–319 (with A. Bryson and R. Gomez).

  • "Gender, source country characteristics, and labor market assimilation among immigrants." Review of Economics and Statistics 93:1 (2011): 43–58 (with F. D. Blau and L. M. Kahn).

  • "Cross-assignment discrimination in pay: A test case of major league baseball." Labour Economics 28 (2014): 84–95 (with Ö. B. Bodvarsson and J. G. Sessions).

article(s)

  • Sports at the vanguard of labor market policy

    Lessons from sports can allow managers to develop better policies at “normal” workplaces

    Kerry L. Papps, October 2020
    Economic theory has many predictions regarding how workers should be paid and how workplaces should be organized. However, economists’ attempts to test these in the real world have been hampered by a lack of consistent information about workers’ productivity levels. Professional sports offer a potential solution, since the performance of individual sportspeople is easily observed and yet many of the same problems faced by managers in workplaces still apply. In many ways, sportspeople may be less atypical of the modern workforce than farm laborers, doctors, or other groups of workers that are often scrutinized by economists.
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