Making Do With Less: Working Harder During Recessions
研究了经济衰退期间生产率上升的原因，发现工人努力程度增加比劳动力结构变化贡献更大，基于一家大公司2006-2010年的日度数据。
There are two obvious possibilities that can account for the rise in productivity during recent recessions. The first is that the decline in the workforce was not random, and that the average worker was of higher quality during the recession than in the preceding period. The second is that each worker produced more while holding worker quality constant. We call the second effect, “making do with less, ” that is, getting more effort from fewer workers. Using daily data spanning June 2006 to May 2010 on individual worker productivity from a large firm, it is possible to measure the increase in productivity due to effort and sorting. For this firm, the first effect—that workers ’ effort increases—dominates the second effect—that the composition of the workforce differs over the business cycle.