Alan Benson

I'm an Associate Professor in the Work and Organizations Group at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, where I hold a Mary and Jim Lawrence Fellowship. I'm also on the graduate faculty of the Department of Applied Economics and the Minnesota Population Center, and am an associate editor in the Organizations department of Management Science.

My research is in personnel economics: the economic analysis of human resources. My studies primarily involve working with companies to analyze their hiring, promotions, and incentives using interviews, applied theory, and econometric methods. I also read across disciplines and collaborate with organizational researchers outside economics, particularly with economic sociologists. My work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Health Economics, American Sociological Review, Demography, Management Science, Organization Science, the ILR Review, and Industrial Relations, and covered by the NY Times, WSJ, NPR, Financial Times, and other outlets.

I received my PhD in 2013 from the MIT Sloan School of Management and my BS from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I teach Masters of HR Compensation and Benefits, MBA Negotiations, and PhD Economics of HR. My digital self is tirelessly teaching Managing Employee Compensation on Coursera.

Expertise:

• Economics of human resources
• Compensation
• Incentives

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Sloan School of Management (2007 — 2013)
• B.S. Cornell University (2003 — 2007)
• University of Oxford (2005 — 2006)

Publications

• Ranganathan, Aruna, and Alan Benson. 2020. "A Numbers Game: Quantification of Work, Auto-Gamification, and Worker Productivity." American Sociological Review, 85(3): 573-609.
• Benson, Alan, and Ben A. Rissing. 2020. "Strength from Within: Internal Mobility and the Retention of High Performers." Organization Science, 31(6): 1313-1620.
• Benson, Alan, Aaron Sojourner, and Akhmed Umyarov. 2020. "Can Reputation Discipline the Gig Economy? Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market." Management Science, 66(5): 1802-25.
• Benson, Alan, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue. 2019. “Promotions and the Peter Principle.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4): 2085-134.
• Benson, Alan, and Sima Sajjadiani. 2018. "Are Bonus Pools Driven by their Incentive Effects? Evidence from Fluctuations in Gainsharing Incentives." Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 71(3): 567-99.
• Benson, Alan. 2015. “Do Agents Game their Agents’ Behavior? Evidence from Sales Managers.” Journal of Labor Economics, 33(4): 863-90.
• Benson, Alan. 2015. “A Theory of Dual Job Search and Sex-Based Occupational Clustering.” Industrial Relations, 54(3): 367-400.
• Benson, Alan. 2014. “Re-Thinking the Two-Body Problem: The Segregation of Women into Geographically-Flexible Occupations.” Demography, 51(5): 1619-39.
• Benson, Alan. 2013. “Firm-Sponsored General Education and Mobility Frictions: Evidence from Hospital Sponsorship of Nursing Schools and Faculty.” Journal of Health Economics, 32(1): 149-59.
• Benson, Alan. 2012. “Labor Market Trends Among Registered Nurses: 2008-2011.” Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice, 13(4): 205-13. [Formerly: “The (New) Economics of Staffing Registered Nurses.”]
• Kochan, Thomas A., David B. Lipsky, and Mary Newhart, and Alan Benson. 2010. “The Long-Haul Effects of Interest Arbitration: The Case of New York State’s Taylor Law.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 64(4): 565-84.

Works in Progress

• Benson, Alan, Simon Board, and Moritz Meyer-ter-vehn. "Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from Retail Sales." Under revision at Review of Economic Studies.
• Manchester, Colleen, Alan Benson, and J. Myles Shaver. "Dual careers and the willingness to consider employment in startup ventures." Under 2nd revision at Strategic Management Journal.
• Benson, Alan, and Louis-Pierre LePage. "The Emergence of Hiring Discrimination." Working paper.
• Benson, Alan, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue. "Potential and the Gender Promotion Gap." Working paper.
• Sajjadiani, Sima, John Kammeyer-Mueller, and Alan Benson. "Organizational Context, Staffing Events, and Work Outcomes: A Dynamic Analysis Approach." Working paper.

Fellowships and Honors

• 2021 Mary and Jim Lawrence Fellowship
• 2020 Carlson School of Management Teaching Award
• 2020 Herbie Award for Excellence in Teaching (top instructor by vote from Master's students)
• 2019, Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award and grant
• 2018, Best paper award at Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) workshop on Incentives, Management, and Organization (IMO) in Milan, for "Promotions and the Peter Principle."
• 2018, John Dunlop Outstanding Young Scholar Award, from LERA
• 2018, Giarrantini Rising Star Award, from Industry Studies Association
• 2018, Herbie Award for Excellence in Teaching (top instructor by vote from Master's students)
• 2017, Second prize, best research paper competition, from Wharton People Analytics Conference, for "Hemming and Hawing over Hawthorne” (retitled "A Numbers Game")
• 2017, Best paper award, LERA/ ILR Review Best Paper Competition, for "Are Bonus Pools Driven by their Incentive Effects?"
• 2017, Best paper award, Financial Institutions, Regulation, and Corporate Governance conference in Sydney, Australia, for “Promotions and the Peter Principle.”
• 2016, Teaching Innovation Grant from Timothy J. Nantell Fund for Excellence in Teaching
• 2014, Outstanding Research Award and Grant, from MPC
• 2014, SOBACO Small Grant
• 2013, LERA Best Dissertation Award (Kochan-Sleigh Award)
• 2012, Russell Sage Co-PI, “Is College Still Worth It?”
• 2012, 64th LERA Meetings of the ASSA, Winner of Best Doctoral Student Paper
• 2008-2013, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
• 2007-2008, MIT Presidential Graduate Fellowship
• 2007, Best senior thesis (Joel Seidman Memorial Prize), for “A Game Theoretic Approach to Social Dialogue”
• 2007, Service to ILR School award (Irving M. Ives Award)
• 2007, Golden Key Outstanding Membership Award for Community Service
• 2005-2007, Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholarship
• 2004-2006, Undergraduate Academic Research Fellowship