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Working Paper
Cultural Change Through Writing Style: Gendered Pronoun Use in the Economics Profession
Through their writing, people often reflect their values. Since the 1970s, academic economists have gradually changed their third-person pronoun choices, from using the masculine form to incorporating feminine and plural forms. We document this transition empirically, and examine the role of social interactions among economists in driving the cultural change reflected in these choices. Our analysis relies on a model where writing style depends on the influence of academic peers, the implicit negotiation between co-authors, and individual authors’ preferences for expressing gender equality ...
Working Paper
It's Not Who You Know—It's Who Knows You: Employee Social Capital and Firm Performance
We show that the social capital embedded in employees' networks contributes to firm performance. Using novel, individual-level network data, we measure a firm's social capital derived from employees' connections with external stakeholders. Our directed network data allow for differentiating those connections that know the employee and those that the employee knows. Results show that firms with more employee social capital perform better; the positive effect stems primarily from employees being known by others. We provide causal evidence exploiting the enactment of a government regulation that ...