Causal effects of management practices (e.g. team incentives, managerial attention, employee referral programs, quality circles)

Matthias Heinz is Associate Professor for Strategy at the University of Cologne. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn and for the Centre for Economics Policy Research (CEPR) in London. He won a number of awards for his teaching and research, e.g. the Quality of Teaching Award in 2019 at the University of Cologne, the Joachim Herz Prize for Economics in 2016 and the Roman Herzog Research Prize in 2015. Matthias studied business administration in Frankfurt and received his PhD in 2014 from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt as well.

Published papers

• What Do Employee Referral Programs Do? Measuring the Direct and Overall Effects of a Management Practice

  Friebel, G., Heinz, M., Hoffman, M., & Zubanov, N. (2023). What do employee referral programs do? Measuring the direct and overall effects of a management practice. Journal of Political Economy.

• Social Preferences of Young Professionals and the Financial Industry

  Gill, A., Heinz, M., Schumacher, H., Sutter, M., Trustworthiness in the Financial Industry. Management Science (forthcoming).

• Market Competition and the Effectiveness of Performance Pay

  Khashabi, P., Heinz, M., Zubanov, N., Kretschmer, T., & Friebel, G. (2020). Market Competition and the Effectiveness of Performance Pay. Organization Science.

• Middle Managers, Personnel Turnover and Performance: A Long-Term Field Experiment in a Retail Chain

  Friebel, G., Heinz, M., & Zubanov, N. (2021). Middle Managers, Personnel Turnover, and Performance: A Long‐Term Field Experiment in a Retail Chain. Management Science.

• Measuring the Indirect Effects of Adverse Employer Behaviour on Worker Productivity: A Field Experiment

  Heinz, M., Jeworrek, S., Mertins, V., Schumacher, H., & Sutter, M. (2020). Measuring the Indirect Effects of Adverse Employer Behavior on Worker Productivity – A Field Experiment. The Economic Journal.

Discussion papers

• Strategic incentives in intermediary markets: Field-experimental evidence

• Attitudes to Migration and the Market for News

• What Do Employee Referral Programs Do? Measuring the Direct and Overall Effects of a Management Practice

• Middle Managers, Personnel Turnover and Performance: A Long-Term Field Experiment in a Retail Chain

• Trustworthiness in the Financial Industry

What is the best thing about your job?

Having the freedom to work on topics I really want to work on.

If you had not gone into research, what would you be doing today?

The same – introducing management practices in firms – only that I would be paid for it as a consultant.

Who or what inspires you?

To see that you create something that really has an impact and makes a lasting difference.

When was the last time you had to change your mind?

I do that every day in my empirical research.

Which advice would you have needed yourself as a doctoral student?

Fortunately, I had good mentors who prepared me for how complex the science system and publication processes are. It’s super important to understand it from the very beginning – I would also pass this on to young doctoral students.