PhD defence S.D.T. (Sam) Hoey

Dissertation in short:

In this thesis I use ice hockey data from the National Hockey League to answer various questions within the domain of labour economics. Chapter two investigates whether early career exposure of entry-level workers to their employers improves their later labour market outcomes. The research finds that entry-level workers who get more opportunities to demonstrate their talent are more likely to be rehired and obtain higher post entry-level salaries. Mechanisms analyses indicate that this effect is primarily attributable to employers learning about worker talent as a result of observing them and updating their beliefs about their talent. Chapter three shifts the focus to inter worker dynamics and team performance. Here I find that an unexpected influx of foreign workers with a different working style into an established industry changes the behavior and effort allocation of incumbent workers to be more similar to the behavior of the incoming workforce. Chapter four evaluates the effect of worker absenteeism on team performance. Findings indicate that team performance decreases as a result of worker absenteeism. This is a combination of the replacement workers being less skilled than the absent worker they replace as well as the ever-present set of workers being less productive following coworker absences. Further results show that this loss in productivity is compensated for by an increase in working time when the absent worker is substitutable, whereas this is not the case when there is a complementary worker absence.