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Working Paper
Allocating Effort and Talent in Professional Labor Markets
In many professional service firms, new associates work long hours while competing in up-or-out promotion contests. Our model explores why these firms require young professionals to take on heavy work loads while simultaneously facing significant risks of dismissal. We argue that the productivity of skilled partners in professional service firms (e.g. law, consulting, investment banking and public accounting) is quite large relative to the productivity of their peers who are competent and experienced but not well-suited to the partner role. Therefore, these firms adopt personnel policies that ...