People, Practices, and Productivity: A Review of New Advances in Personnel Economics
by Mitchell Hoffman & Christopher Stanton

This chapter surveys recent advances in personnel economics. We discuss new research on incentives and compensation; hiring practices; the influence of managers and peers; and time use, technology, and training. Two main themes emerge from this survey. First, we illustrate the interplay between these topics and productivity differences between people and work units. We discuss evidence showing substantial and persistent productivity variation among workers in the same roles, and we examine the extent to which personnel economics research can explain this variation. Second, personnel economics has benefited from exploration – the willingness to use new data and methods to shed light on existing questions and raise new ones. Since the last handbook chapter, personnel economics has evolved from focusing primarily on compensation and incentives to embracing a broader research agenda that examines various HR practices and their impact on worker and firm outcomes. As many personnel studies use data from individual firms, we discuss external validity and provide concrete guidance on improving discussions of generalizability from specific contexts.