So you want to help people? That’s great — but beware the law of unintended consequences. Three stories from the modern workplace. 

SOURCES:Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Zoe Cullen, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.Marina Gertsberg, senior lecturer in finance at the University of Melbourne. 

RESOURCES:"Is Pay Transparency Good?" by Zoë Cullen (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2024)."DP18969 Economics Coauthorships in the Aftermath of MeToo," by Noriko Amano-Patino, Elisa Faraglia, and Chryssi Giannitsarou (CEPR Discussion Paper, 2024)."The Underground Economy of Company Reviews," by Shikhar Sachdev (Career Fair, 2023)."Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall?" by Peter Q. Blair and Benjamin Posmanick (NBER Working Paper, 2023)."The Unintended Consequences of #MeToo: Evidence from Research Collaborations," by Marina Gertsberg (SSRN, 2022)."Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms," by Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato (Management Science, 2021)."Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency," by Zoe B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson (NBER Working Paper, 2021)."How Much Does Your Boss Make? The Effects of Salary Comparisons," by Zoë Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia (NBER Working Paper, 2018)."Wall Street Rule for the #MeToo Era: Avoid Women at All Cost," by Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski (Bloomberg, 2018)."A Comprehensive Analysis of the Effects of US Disability Discrimination Laws on the Employment of the Disabled Population," by Patrick Button, Philip Armour, and Simon Hollands (NBER Working Paper, 2016)."Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act," by Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist (Journal of Political Economy, 2001).