Derek Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, chaired a session and presented a paper at the Association of Comparative Economics Conference, part of the Allied Social Sciences Conference, in Chicago on Jan. 6.The paper, titled "Teams, Performance-Related Pay, Profit Sharing and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from a Food-Processing Plant" was co-authored by Panu Kalmi and Antti Kauhanen, both members of the Helsinki School of Economics faculty. The authors assembled and analyzed new panel data to investigate the impact of important changes in human resource practices on firm performance for a food-processing plant.
The paper's findings support those from other studies that have shown the crucial importance of human resource plan design and the context surrounding implementation for policies to have economic payoffs.
Jones also organized and chaired a panel titled "Changes In Incentives and Organizational Performance" at the same conference.