Remy Beauregard

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics, UC Davis (expected 2026)

B.A. in Economics & Psychology, Vassar College, 2019

Job Market Paper: Paid With(out) Purpose: Perceptions, Preferences, and the Meaning of Work

I develop a novel online experiment with 387 subjects on Prolific and simple utility model to examine how workers respond to reported work meaning. Workers appear to value different aspects of work and be willing to give up other incentives for their best work match. 31% of workers appear not to value meaning in their work, 27% appear not to value work pay, 30% appear to value both, and 12% cannot be characterized. Overall, 57% of workers are willing to sacrifice up to 14% of possible pay in their pursuit of meaningful work. For workers who value work meaning, I estimate positive impacts of meaningfulness on the quantity and quality of output, although these effects appear only for a task with prosocial framing. Finally, I validate a light-touch treatment designed to increase worker awareness of the value they place on meaning, again finding effects only for workers who seek meaning in their work. Importantly, raising worker awareness of work meaning has no impact on the types of incentives they seek out. These results offer insights into how such interventions and preferences for work meaning might be leveraged in organizational settings.​​​​