I am a senior research specialist at Princeton University and an assistant professor at the African School of Economics. I received my PhD in economics from Duke University.
My research falls into labor economics and political economy. Within labor economics, I focus on the labor outcomes of software engineers and other tech workers.
E-mail: gnyeki@princeton.edu. If you read Spanish, then my name is pronounced pretty close to how you would say gábor ñéki. It is written as [ˈɡaːbor ˈɲeːki] in IPA.
Working papers
Screening for Engineering Talent
Summary: Software firms endogenously choose their production technology. In a signaling model, choosing a high-effort programming language attracts high-ability engineers. I show evidence for the model in a data set on engineer skills, and in another one on U.S. job postings.
Work in progress
Manager Feedback Style and Workplace Productivity
Summary: We use neural networks to capture the tone of workplace feedback between software engineers. Using an instrumental variables strategy, we show that “toxic” feedback reduces engineer productivity.
Co-authors: Calvin Jahnke and Carolyn Tsao
Learning Quality in Non-Routine Occupations
Summary: I introduce novel measures of individual output quality for software engineers and test learning by doing. In a large software project, quality only benefits from specific experience and is in fact harmed by general experience.
The Effect of Technology Training for Women in Nigeria
Co-authors: Martin Abel and Oyebola Okunogbe
Parental Education and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Colonial Schools in Nigeria
Co-authors: Léonard Wantchékon and Dozie Okoye
Social and Political Institutions, and Colonial Schools in Nigeria
Co-authors: Léonard Wantchékon and Dozie Okoye
Shaping Students’ Education and Career Aspirations: Evidence from Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps
Co-authors: Oyebola Okunogbe and Léonard Wantchékon
Evaluating Multidimensional Programs in the Presence of Endogenous, Multidimensional Networks
Co-authors: Robert Garlick and Kate Orkin
Image Concerns and Voting Order in Group Decisions
Co-author: Gergely Hajdu