Research
Working Papers
Don’t let your fruits rot: An experimental investigation of leadership training in a grocery store with Simone Haeckl and Mari Rege
Despite widespread use, evidence on the effectiveness of leadership training is limited. We study the effects of a state-of-the-art online leadership program in a retail chain with 159 stores and over 1000 employees. We use an event study approach to test the effects of the training, controlling for seasonal effects. We find no impact of the training on customer satisfaction, food waste, or a measure of store profitability. In addition, we run an RCT to test whether we can improve the effectiveness by addressing two behavioral barriers to learning motivation. First, leaders may doubt their own and their employees' capacity for skill development. Second, they might underinvest in training due to present bias. All stores received the training, with random assignment to the standard or enhanced version. The enhanced version also showed no greater effect on productivity than the standard one. Leaders in the enhanced group reported being more supportive several months post-training. Still, we find no effect on employees’ work satisfaction, intention to quit, or turnover.
Supportive Leadership and Employee Satisfaction and Retention: Causal Evidence from a Large Grocery Store Chain with Jon-Sander Amland and Mari Rege
Can supportive leadership improve employee retention? While prior research documents correlations between leadership and retention, causal evidence remains limited. We estimate the causal effect of supportive leadership on employee retention using two complementary approaches. First, we apply an employee fixed-effects model to control for time-invariant employee characteristics. Second, we employ a jackknife instrumental variables strategy to address time-varying confounders. Drawing on rich data from around 1800 employees across 202 stores in a large Norwegian retail chain, we find that supportive leadership significantly improves employee well-being and retention. Both identification strategies yield consistent results. Policy simulations further suggest that training a low-support leader to average supportiveness can substantially increase retention. Our findings underscore the importance of supportive leadership for engaging and retaining employees.
Foreign Peers in Higher Education: The Effects of Internationalization on Native Students’ Academic Outcomes with Melisa L. Diaz Lema
This paper examines the effects of internationalization on the academic outcomes of native students, using administrative data from a large public STEM university in Italy. The data comprise a panel of over 33,000 students enrolled across 17 study programs and 6 cohort years. Our research design exploits the introduction of an English parallel track in the Bachelor's program in Civil Engineering within an instrumented-difference-in-differences framework. We find that the introduction of the English track more than doubles the share of foreign students in civil engineering relative to the other study programs taught primarily in Italian. We then examine the overall effect of the English track expansion, uncovering that native students are less likely to drop out and are also more likely to graduate on time, although they attain a slightly lower GPA. Further analysis of mechanisms reveals that the increased share of foreign students drives the positive impacts on graduation outcomes, whereas, the small reduction in GPA is likely due to increased class sizes and other changes to the learning environment resulting from the program expansion. The findings contribute to our understanding of how internationalization policies affect native students in higher education.
Identifying a Cumulative Learning Technology: Evidence from Online Learning
An inherent feature of learning in most disciplines, especially STEM, is its cumulative structure, which makes developing advanced skills challenging. This paper credibly estimates a dynamic learning technology of student effort in a foundational university course with a cumulative structure. Doing so is incredibly difficult because effort inputs are typically unobserved and are dynamic endogenous choices. To address this, I use rich panel data on nearly 3,700 undergraduates in an online introductory programming course, which precisely tracks study time throughout the course. Then I carry out a field experiment which generates period-by-period exogenous variation in effort allocation, enabling me to identify dynamic interactions across effort inputs in the learning technology. I find evidence of dynamic learning complementarities as the marginal benefit to studying in each learning period is increasing in prior knowledge accumulated. I then develop and estimate a multi-stage behavioral model of effort supply, using the experiment to identify benefit and cost parameters at each stage. The model informs policy simulations of grading schemes, showing that decreasing assignment weights across the course—rather than equal weights—boosts effort early on when foundational skills are acquired. The findings in this study have implications for effective learning strategies and approaches to course design.
Provision of Online Public Goods: Evidence From a Peer Discussion Board
How can policy designers sustain active participation in online communities despite free-riding incentives? This paper addresses the question in the context of voluntary online student discussion boards -- a prominent feature of large classrooms and distance education used to support learning at scale. Using survey and administrative data from nearly 1,200 undergraduates in a foundational programming course at a large public university, I measure students' altruistic attitudes and track their reading and posting behavior. Two randomized informational interventions are implemented: one informing students about the discussion board’s availability, and another encouraging them to internalize the spillover value of peer discussion. Both interventions increase sign-ups and contributions, respectively. I find that access to and participation in the board significantly improve learning outcomes. Using a behavioural model of student contributions, I argue that having targeted bonus credit for instructor-endorsed posts can effectively reduce free-riding, enhance the value-added of the discussion board.
Work in Progresss
Local Language Acquisition and Social Integration: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Central Europe with Cornel Nesseler and Jiaqi Zou
Linguistic integration is often seen as key to immigrants’ social assimilation. We investigate whether local language proficiency improves English-speaking foreigners’ access to rental housing in Central Europe (Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia). In a field experiment, we randomly vary rental inquiries by (i) local language proficiency (basic/A2 or fluent), (ii) name origin (foreign- or native-sounding), and (iii) whether the sender signals ongoing local language learning. For foreign-sounding names, fluent local-language messages nearly double the likelihood of receiving a viewing invitation compared to English-only messages, while basic proficiency offers no benefit. Signaling language learning without demonstrated proficiency also has no effect. Our results highlight the importance of fluent local language proficiency for the social integration of foreigners.
Psychological Safety and Employee Satisfaction and Retention: Causal Evidence from a Large Grocery Store Chain with Jon-Sander Amland, Simone Haeckl, and Mari Rege
This paper examines the effect of psychological safety—the belief that employees can voice opinions and explore ideas without fear of negative consequences—on well-being and retention. Using panel data from a large Norwegian retail chain with 202 stores, we address endogeneity through two complementary identification strategies: individual fixed effects and a jackknife instrumental variables approach. The fixed-effects model controls for time-invariant heterogeneity, while the jackknife-IV strategy addresses time-varying confounders in separate analyses. Our most conservative estimates indicate that a one–standard deviation increase in psychological safety raises job satisfaction by 0.23 SD, reduces quit intentions by 8 percent, and lowers actual turnover by 3 percentage points. These findings highlight the importance of psychologically safe work environments for enhancing employee well-being and retention.
Encouraging High-achieving Students to Enroll in Advanced Courses, with Robert McMillan and Linda Wang
Misinformed high-achieving students may enroll in less challenging university courses, limiting future options and hindering their human capital development. This paper examines whether such students can be guided toward more ambitious academic paths. We conduct several field experiments across four cohorts of first-year economics students at a large Canadian research university, varying how students are informed about advanced upper-year courses. The interventions differ in their scalability. We find that an intensive in-person information session substantially increases enrollment in the most rigorous second-year economics courses, particularly among first-generation students who are initially less aware of these options. In contrast, delivering the same information via email or online sessions has no significant effect. The results suggest that personalized, resource-intensive nudges can meaningfully influence course choices, with implications for university advising and policy design.
From Autopilot to Co-Pilot: Guiding Effective AI Use in Higher Education with Ajinkya Keskar, Ozlem Tonguc, and Case Tatro