Matching and Mentoring: Effects of Managers on Worker Productivity

Chengyuan Hua
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Chengyuan Hua: West Virginia University

No 26-08, Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Abstract: This paper studies how managers matter for worker productivity by exploiting manager moves in Major League Baseball. I first show that manager effects are primarily match-specific using an AKM-type model. Then, staggered difference-in-differences results show positive effects of shared characteristics, including same position, both lefties, and same hometown. Effects of same position and both lefties are larger than same hometown. Effects are more pronounced for younger and less productive workers, indicating that mentoring is the primary mechanism while in-group bias is secondary. Finally, there is suggestive evidence that a manager’s productivity as a worker is not a positive characteristic.

Keywords: Manager; productivity; matching; mentoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 M54 Z22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wvu:wpaper:26-08

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