Doctoral Dissertation Research: Pay-Setting for New Hires

本研究旨在探讨薪资历史禁令对企业惯例的影响，并探讨文化对薪资的理解。 最近的一些立法已经颁布了工资历史禁令，也就是说，已经禁止了基于候选人过去的工资提供给候选人的工资的做法。 该项目将利用采访、民族志和调查实验，记录公司做法可能因此类禁令而发生的变化，并更广泛地阐述人们如何看待和理解薪酬。 研究结果将确定企业层面的做法如何与广泛共享的文化理念相互作用，以复制或减少这种政策变化后的薪酬差异。 这些发现将有助于利益相关者和公众了解重要的经济模式，以及如何改善它们。本研究使用了多种方法，包括对60名专家和从业人员的访谈，组织内部的人种学观察，以及调查实验。 访谈将深入了解公司层面的做法，这些做法如何应对工资历史禁令，以及对跨行业和职业薪酬的共同理解。 组织内部的人种学观察将验证自我报告与该领域的实践，并将记录给定公司内不同角色的差异。 调查实验将被用来测试从实地调查中得出的关于求职者和起薪的看法的假设。 通过采用多种方法来深入了解薪酬设置，这项研究将有助于对薪酬差异的文献，更广泛地说，支撑市场关系的文化理念。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This project investigates the effects of salary history bans on firm practices and investigates cultural understandings about pay. Some recent legislation has enacted salary history bans, that is, has outlawed the practice of basing the salary offered a job candidate on the candidate's past salary. Using interviews, ethnography, and survey experiments, this project will document how firm practices may have altered due to such bans and will elaborate more generally how pay is perceived and understood. Results will identify how firm-level practices may interact with widely shared cultural ideas to reproduce or diminish pay differences following this policy change. These findings will contribute to stakeholder and public understanding of important economic patterns and how they may be ameliorated.This research uses multiple methods, including interviews with 60 experts and practitioners, ethnographic observation inside organizations, and a survey experiment. The interviews will provide insight into firm-level practices, how these practices may be changing in response to the salary history ban, and shared understandings about pay across industries and occupations. Ethnographic observation inside organizations will validate self-reports against practices in the field and will document variations across roles within a given firm. The survey experiment will be used to test hypotheses derived from fieldwork regarding perceptions of job candidates and starting pay. By employing multiple methods to gain insight into pay-setting, this research will contribute to the literature on pay differences and, more broadly, the cultural ideas that underpin market relations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.