Anthony Michael Marino

Over the past decade, federal, state and local governments have restricted the types and uses of information in hiring and promotion decisions. Examples include the banning of credit reports and criminal records. This paper presents a simple microeconomic model of a competitive labor market and studies the economic effects of information bans. The key trade off is between allocative efficiency and helping a labor type with an undesirable characteristic. We formulate a rationale for regulation and compare information bans to direct subsidies going to firms hiring those with the bad characteristic. Moreover, we discuss the case where the ban creates negative feedback on the perceptions of firms considering workers of the bad type.

Revision of my microeconomics book to be used in GSBA 511

This paper considers a firm's optimal investment in training and motivation measures in a hidden action agency problem. We study how these strategies interact with each other and the contract in order to create value for the firm. Productivity enhancing training can be firm specific or non-firm specific and firm specific motivation can enhance utility or reduce effort cost. Whether these measures are complements or independents depends on the firm specificity of human capital and whether the participation constraint is binding. We characterize how a tighter labor market affects marginal profitabilities and examine the relative benefits of motivation measures which enhance utility versus those which decrease effort cost.