Essays in Labor Economics

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine the determinants of workplace discrimination using the United States Postal Service (USPS) as a case study. The USPS is one of the largest employers in the country, and as part of the federal government, it must comply with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and share privacy protected data with the public. Through FOIA requests, I have obtained data on roughly 250,000 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints bringing more than 800,000 charges of harassment and other forms of discrimination at more than 12,000 USPS offices from fiscal years 2004 through 2019. I use this dataset in a series of investigations that examine the factors that contribute to increased discrimination at this important institution.

The first chapter of my dissertation, “The Impact of Financial Stress on Workplace Harassment and Discrimination,” explores how stress that stems from worries about finances influences discrimination and harassment at work. Stress can cause individuals to act out in unwanted ways, and I argue that one way this acting out can manifest itself is via discrimination and harassment. To isolate the role of financial stress, I study the financial stress that workers experience over the course of a fixed two-week pay period at the USPS. My empirical strategy is similar in spirt to the methods used in studies examining the effect of the monthly government benefit cycle on various outcomes. Consistent with a hypothesized increase in financial stress during the second week of the pay cycle, my results show that incidents of harassment and discrimination rise by about 5 percent in the second week of the pay cycle as compared with the first week. Using data that differentiates when a discrimination incident occurred from when it was reported along with data on other characteristics of the complaint, I find that the uncovered effects are likely driven by changes in the number of incidents rather than in their reporting.

The second chapter, “The Impact of Extreme Heat on Workplace Harassment and Discrimination,” examines a different form of stress: heat stress. Using variation in extreme heat over space and time, I find that heat stress experienced on days when maximum temperatures exceed 90 degrees increases discrimination incidents by roughly 5 percent relative to days when temperatures are between 60 and 70 degrees. The effects are widespread across the USPS, and they also appear to be driven by changes in the number of incidents rather than in their reporting are experienced by workers The results from this study expand our knowledge base on the potential economic implications of future climate change while also providing additional evidence on the role of stress in influencing harassment and discrimination at work.

The third chapter, “The Limits of Popular Anti-Discrimination Workplace Policies” examines the impact of expanding specific policies already in place to combat discrimination. In particular, it studies the efficacy of increasing the use of grievance procedures and training, which are among the most common practices used to reduce workplace discrimination and harassment and protect firms against punitive damages in associated lawsuits. To understand the effect of grievance procedures, I use variation from a policy change that moved EEO reporting from the phone to online. This policy change led to a large increase in sex-based complaints in areas with greater access to broadband. Yet, I observe no commensurate change in sex gaps related to turnover, hiring, and promotions. To understand the effect of training, I combine data on the timing and location of USPS rights and remedies-based discrimination training with data on EEO charges brought forward by USPS workers. I find no evidence of changes in the number of EEO incidents or reports following training. My analyses thus suggest that increasing the use of training or grievance procedures is unlikely to have large effects on workplace outcomes. Taken together, my dissertation research shows that organizational design factors related to workplace stress, like pay and working conditions, can have important effects on experienced harassment and discrimination, while the additional use of policies commonly used to tackle the issue, like training or grievance procedures, may have limited impact.