• Use economic theory and state of the art evidence-based research to analyze practical issues related to human resource management, such as incentive and compensation systems, task assignment, executive pay, turnover patterns, and on-the-job training.
• Understand how managers can ensure diversity in the workplace and at the same time maximize worker, team and firm productivity
• Be able to evaluate various protocols, and know what data needs to be collected and analyzed (e.g. to measure worker performance or efficiency of task allocation)
• Gain deeper knowledge of human resource management, and place it in a broader context, e.g understand how labor market policies impact human resource management at the firm, and understand the role of unions and collective bargaining for the workplace

This course will teach students how firms manage one of their most valuable resources, namely their employees. It will cover practical topics such as hiring and firing, how to retain high quality employees, and how different compensation schemes can be used to reward effort and increase productivity. The course will also focus on diversity at the workplace, and how different strategies may be appropriate for different employees and different firms.

The course will cover the following topics:

• Hiring (How to invest in employees, how many to hire, how to make decision with imperfect information) and recruitment (How to screen job applicants, signaling theory)
• How/when to invest in skills (on-the-job training)
• How to manage turnover? (retention strategies, layoffs, buyouts)
• Decision making at the firm
• The role of the firm structure
• Performance evaluation, how and when to reward performance, promotions and incentives, options and executive pay
• Diversity in the workplace
• Unions and collective bargaining
• The role of labor market policies

Personnel Economics in Practice by E. Lazear and M. Gibbs