About
I am a PhD candidate at MIT Sloan school of management, affiliated with the Institute for Work and Employment Research. I study the social forces that shape the organization of work and their implications for workplace and labor market inequality. My research explores various factors: political polarization, minimum wage mandates, labor and social activisms, informal workplace relationships, and algorithmic infrastructure. On one hand, I examine the mechanisms shaping work organization by asking questions such as whether firms adjust labor management practices in response to economic pressures from legal changes, and how platform infrastructure facilitates the emergence of unpaid labor and worker-control systems on social media. On the other hand, I investigate the implications for inequality, including whether managers' political ideologies influence gender-based task allocation and wage disparities, how informal workplace relationships contribute to between-firm wage inequality, and how different groups of workers experience uneven reskilling pressures amid shifting skill demands. I graduated with a M.A. in Computational Social Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Tsinghua University. You can reach me at ditong@mit.edu.
Working Paper
Wage and Non-Wage Interplay in Management: Do Minimum Wages Affect Management Practices?
(MS thesis, MIT Sloan)
Abstract (click to expand): Extensive research has examined the impact of minimum wages on employment. Yet less explored is whether and how these mandatory wage increases affect the broader spectrum of non-wage management practices and job quality. This empirical question serves as a strategic case to examine theories of firm management practice setting behavior, specifically in terms of the interplay between setting wage and non-wage components. Compensating differentials theory posits that low-wage employers will diminish non-wage amenities to counteract the added labor costs. Conversely, the high-road strategy literature anticipates firms to enhance crucial aspects of job quality to optimize worker productivity. To assess these contrasting hypotheses, I used U.S. employee-employer job reviews and ratings to measure management quality in both general terms and across three specific dimensions: schedule quality, investment in employees (training, career opportunity, and relational investment), and employee input (autonomy and voice). I conducted difference-in-differences analyses based on multiple state-mandated minimum wage hikes from 2015-2021. The analyses show that as firms comply with mandates to raise wages, they, on average, neither compromise job quality in non-wage aspects nor undergo a thorough management system upgrade in the high-road direction. These findings align with organizational inertia theories and provide evidence of the barriers to high-road diffusion. Specifically, economic and policy pressure can be insufficient to cause strategic adoption of high-road employment systems. This study carries significant policy implications as the first comprehensive evaluation of minimum wage mandates on low-wage job quality. On one hand, it alleviates concerns regarding a negative spillover effect of mandatory wage increases on overall job quality. On the other hand, it highlights the limitations of minimum wage mandates in fostering systematic enhancements in working conditions beyond wages.
(with Lingfei Wu and James Evans)
Revise and Resubmit, Nature Communications
Abstract (click to expand): Substantial scholarship has estimated the susceptibility of jobs to automation, but little has examined how job contents evolve in the information age as new technologies substitute for tasks, shifting required skills rather than eliminating entire jobs. Here we explore patterns of occupational skill change and characterize occupations and workers subject to the greatest reskilling requirements. Recent work found that changing skill requirements are greatest for STEM occupations in the 2010s. Nevertheless, analyzing 167 million online job posts covering 727 occupations, we find that skill change is greatest for low-skilled occupations when accounting for distance between skills. We further investigate the differences in skill change across employer and market size, as well as social demographic groups. We find that jobs from small employers and markets experienced larger skill upgrades to catch up with the skill demands of their large employers and markets. Female and minority workers are disproportionately employed in low-skilled jobs and face the most significant skill adjustments. While these varied skill changes could create uneven reskilling pressures across workers, they may also lead to a narrowing of gaps in job quality and prospects. We conclude by showcasing our model's potential to chart job evolution directions using skill embedding spaces.
Replication Files
Publication
(with Nathan Wilmers and Victoria Zhang)
Forthcoming, American Journal of Sociology
Abstract (click to expand): Employer investment, social closure, peer networks: substantial research highlights differences in informal social structure across workplaces. Yet studies of pay inequality between firms have largely neglected these differences in favor of more easily measurable features like firm size or ownership structure. We show how three types of workplace social relations shape firm pay setting: employer relational investment that supports higher wages, social closure as a source of bargaining power, and amenity ties that lock workers into jobs despite low pay. To operationalize these concepts, we draw on text data from a large archive of job reviews. Variance decomposition analyses show that differences in social relations account for up to 20% of overall inequality in between-firm pay premiums and 7% of residual inequality. Differences in informal social organization, and not just formal organization, predict pay differences between firms.
(with Thomas A. Kochan, Janice R. Fine, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Suresh Naidu, Jacob Barnes, Yaminette Diaz-Linhart, John Kallas, Jeonghun Kim, Arrow Minster, Phela Townsend, and Danielle Twiss)
Work and Occupations 50, no. 3 (2023): 335-350.
Abstract (click to expand): American workers are currently engaged in an upsurge in collective actions aimed at achieving a stronger voice and representation at work; this desire for increased voice at work is also evident in survey data. However, union organizing drives in the United States typically meet with strong employer resistance, and such resistance reduces the likelihood that the organizing effort will be successful. In addition to unions, a broad array of other efforts has been initiated to strengthen worker voice and representation. The authors discuss these efforts, including worker centers, and observe that there is no “one size fits all” approach to contemporary worker organizing.
Full Report Version
Selected Work in Progress
Manager Political Ideology and Gender Inequality
Algorithmic Control on Social Media Platforms and Fan Economy
(with Chen Liang)
Teaching
MIT Kaufman Teaching Certification Program (2024 Spring)
TA for MIT Sloan’s 15.665 Power and Negotiation (2023 Spring), 15.268 Choice Points: Thinking about Life and Leadership through Literature (2025 Spring)
