Learning‐by‐Doing when Times Are Tough: Evidence from the Great Recession

Angela Zha and Rebecca L. C. Taylor

The Economic Record, 2025, vol. 101, issue 333, 169-185

Abstract: We analyse potential macroeconomic determinants of worker learning curves by matching exogenous changes in macroeconomic conditions during the Great Recession to high‐frequency data on worker productivity from supermarkets. We find evidence of a statistically significant learning curve among new cashiers. Despite finding that higher unemployment rates induce greater effort by workers in general, the learning rate is stronger for cashiers who started work during an economic upturn, while worsening macroeconomic conditions engender a shallower learning curve. Hence, weakening labour markets are not associated with stronger learning rates on average. This analysis yields important implications for firms and policy‐makers in understanding worker behaviour on the job across business cycles.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12871

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:101:y:2025:i:333:p:169-185

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0013-0249

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Record is currently edited by Paul Miller, Glenn Otto and Martin Richardson

More articles in The Economic Record from The Economic Society of Australia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().