Mitchell Hoffman

Education

Ph.D., economics, University of California, Berkeley

Summary of Experience

Professor Hoffman is an economist who specializes in labor, personnel, and behavioral economics. His research explores diverse topics related to how organizations hire, manage, and motivate workers, and how such human resource practices shape firm, worker, and societal outcomes. Professor Hoffman’s work has addressed the use of algorithms and AI in hiring and the impact of training repayment agreements, employee referral programs, and workplace monitoring and surveillance. He has also studied factors that impact hiring in nontraditional work settings, including freelancing and the gig economy. Professor Hoffman has served as an expert witness on investor decision making in the financial industry. He has partnered with organizations around the world to improve labor outcomes and productivity, including in the high-tech, trucking, call center, garment, temporary staffing, and food delivery industries. Professor Hoffman’s research has been published in numerous academic publications, including The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Handbook of Labor Economics. He also serves as an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. His insights have been featured in press publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), where he serves as the director for the NBER Personnel Economics Working Group. Professor Hoffman has been honored with multiple research and teaching awards, and he teaches graduate, undergraduate, and executive education courses in personnel economics, business strategy, people analytics, and applied econometrics. Prior to joining UC Santa Barbara, he was a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto.