Whitney Zhang ’21 believes within the importance of valuing staff no matter where they fit into an organizational chart.
Zhang is a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics studying labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial decisions corporations make affect staff across the pay spectrum.
“I’ve been curious about economics, economic impacts, and related social issues for a very long time,” says Zhang, who majored in mathematical economics as an undergraduate. “I desired to apply my math skills to see how we could improve policies and their effects.”
Zhang is curious about find out how to improve conditions for staff. She believes it’s necessary to construct relationships with policymakers, specializing in an evidence-driven approach to policy, while all the time remembering to center those the policies may affect. “We’ve got to recollect the people whose lives are impacted by business operations and laws,” she says.
She’s also aware of the complex intermixture of politics, social status, and financial obligations organizations and their employees need to navigate.
“Though I’m studying staff, it’s necessary to think about your entire complex ecosystem when solving for these sorts of challenges, including firm incentives and global economic conditions,” she says.
The intersection of tech and labor policy
Zhang began investigating worker productivity, artificial intelligence, and related economic and labor market phenomena early in her time as a doctoral student, collaborating often with fellow PhD students within the department.
A collaboration with economics doctoral student Shakked Noy yielded the 2023 study investigating ChatGPT as a tool to enhance productivity. Their research found it substantially increased staff’ productivity on writing tasks, most so for staff who initially performed the worst on the tasks.
“This was considered one of the earliest pieces of evidence on the productivity effects of generative AI, and contributed to providing concrete data on how impactful these kinds of tools is likely to be within the workplace and on the labor market,” Zhang says.
In other ongoing research — “Determinants of Irregular Employee Schedules” — Zhang is using data from a payroll provider to look at scheduling unpredictability, investigating why corporations employ unpredictable schedules and the way these schedules affect low-wage employees’ quality of life.
The scheduling project, conducted with MIT economics PhD student Nathan Lazarus, is motivated, partly, by existing sociological evidence that low-wage staff’ unpredictable schedules are related to worse sleep and well-being. “We’ve seen a relationship between higher turnover and inconsistent, inadequate schedules, which suggests staff dis-prefer these sorts of schedules,” Zhang says.
At a tutorial roundtable, Zhang presented her results to Starbucks employees involved in scheduling and staffing. The attendees desired to learn more about how different scheduling practices impacted staff and their productivity. “These are the sorts of questions that would reveal useful information for small businesses, large corporations, and others,” she says.
By conducting this research, Zhang hopes to raised understand whether or not scheduling regulations can improve affected employees’ quality of life, while also considering potential unintended consequences. “Why are these schedules set the best way they’re set?” she asks. “Do businesses with these sorts of schedules require increased regulation?”
One other project, conducted with MIT economics doctoral student Arjun Ramani, examines the linkages between offshoring, distant work, and related outcomes. “Do the technological and managerial practices which have made distant work possible further facilitate offshoring?” she asks. “Do organizations see significant gains in efficiency? What are the impacts on U.S. and offshore staff?”
Her work is being funded through the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Putting people at the middle
Zhang has observed the various kinds of individuals economics and better education could bring together. She followed a dual enrollment track in highschool, completing college-level courses with students from across a wide range of demographic identities. “I enjoyed centering people in my work,” she says. “Taking classes with a various group of scholars, including veterans and moms returning to high school to finish their studies, made me more interested by socioeconomic issues and the policies relevant to them.”
She later enrolled at MIT, where she participated within the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She also accomplished an internship on the World Bank, worked as a summer analyst on the Federal Reserve Bank of Recent York, and worked as an assistant for a various faculty cohort including MIT economists David Autor, Jon Gruber, and Nina Roussille. Autor is her primary advisor on her doctoral research, a mentor she cites as a major influence.
“[Autor’s] course, 14.03 (Microeconomics and Public Policy), cemented connections between theory and practice,” she says. “I believed the category was revelatory in showing the sorts of questions economics can answer.”
Doctoral study has revealed interesting pathways of investigation for Zhang, as have her relationships together with her student peers and other faculty. She has, for instance, leveraged faculty connections to realize access to hourly wage data in support of her scheduling and worker impacts work. “Generally, economists have had administrative data on earnings, but not on hours,” she notes.
Zhang’s concentrate on improving others’ lives extends to her work outside the classroom. She’s a mentor for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center College Access Program and a member of MIT’s Graduate Christian Fellowship group. When she’s not having fun with spicy soups or paddling on the Charles, she takes advantage of opportunities to decompress together with her art at W20 Arts Studios.
“I desired to create time for myself outside of research and the classroom,” she says.
Zhang cites the advantages of MIT’s concentrate on cross-collaboration and inspiring students to explore other disciplines. As an undergraduate, Zhang minored in computer science, which taught her coding skills critical to her data work. Exposure to engineering also led her to grow to be more curious about questions around how technology and staff interact.
Working with other scholars within the department has improved how Zhang conducts inquiries. “I’ve grow to be the sort of well-rounded student and skilled who can discover and quantify impacts, which is invaluable for future projects,” she says. Exposure to different academic and research areas, Zhang argues, helps increase access to ideas and data.
