University of Bath, UK, and IZA, Germany
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
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
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"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).
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"The effects of social security taxes and minimum wages on employment: Evidence from Turkey." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 65:3 (2012): 686–707.
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"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).
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"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).
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"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).
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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 2020Economic 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.MoreLess