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Paul Oyer

Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and NBER, USA, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

The Mary and Rankine Van Anda Entrepreneurial Professor and Professor of Economics; Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Research interest

Labor economics, personnel economics, incentives, matching firms and workers

Website

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/paul-oyer

Past positions

Faculty Co-Director, Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Stanford University Graduate School of Business (2016–2019); Fred H. Merrill Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2011–2018); Dhirubhai Ambani Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship (2016–2017)

Qualifications

PhD in Economics, Princeton University, 1996

Selected publications

  • "Older workers and the gig economy." AEA Papers and Proceedings 109 (2019): 372–376 (with R. Diamond and C. Cook).

  • "The returns to elite degrees: The case of American lawyers." LR Review 72:2 (2019): 446–479 (with S. Schaefer).

  • "Personnel economics: Hiring and incentives." In: Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 4B. Great Britain: North Holland, 2011; pp. 1769–1823 (with S. Schaefer).

  • "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories." Journal of Financial Economics 76:1 (2005): 99–133 (with S. Schaefer).

  • "Why do firms use incentives that have no incentive effects?" Journal of Finance 59:4 (2004): 1619–1650.

article(s)

  • The gig economy

    Non-traditional employment is a great opportunity for many, but it won’t replace traditional employment

    Paul Oyer, January 2020
    The number of people holding non-traditional jobs (independent contractors, temporary workers, “gig” workers) has grown steadily as technology increasingly enables short-term labor contracting and fixed employment costs continue to rise. For many firms that need less than a full-time person for short-term work and for many workers who value flexibility this has created a great deal of surplus. During slack economic periods, non-traditional work also serves as an alternative safety net. Non-traditional jobs will continue to become more common, though policy changes could slow or accelerate the trend.
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