John Morgan
Individuals are attracted to professions where their talent is rewarded. Even if an institution does nothing to increase base wages, promotion benefits or promotion opportunities, it can still succeed in improving the talent pool and raise their effort level by making the promotion process more meritocratic. This is the main finding of a study – “On the Merits of Meritocracy” – conducted by John Morgan together with Felix Vardy (Berkeley) and Dana Sisak (Erasmus Rotterdam). Their research demonstrates that given a choice between increasing promotion opportunities, promotion benefits or the degree of meritocracy in promotion decision-making, policy-makers can most effectively attract talent and create a high-effort culture in the public sector purely through merit-based promotions, even when the sector lags in wages and opportunities. The model is used to study a range of policy interventions designed to improve public school outcomes in the US.
While at CESifo, John Morgan, along with Ifo researcher Justin Tumlinson, will be studying the impact on global trade flows of the dramatic decrease in transportation costs for goods and services that has occurred over the past 30 years. While primarily theoretical, the study offers important and surprising policy implications for the impact of trade liberalisation after accounting for the transactions costs from trade. Mr Morgan’s other research interests include studies in the economics of the Internet, tournaments and contests, information flows within organisations and auctions.
John Morgan is the Gary and Sherron Kalbach Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He is an editor for the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations as well as associate editor for Economic Journal. Mr Morgan is faculty director for the Berkeley-Haas Center for Executive Education and founding director of Xlab, UC Berkeley’s experimental social sciences laboratory.