Free riding in team production arises because individual effort is not perfectly observable. It seems natural to suppose that greater transparency would enhance incentives. Therefore, it is puzzling that team production often lacks transparency about individual contributions despite negligible...

Young professionals typically do not enter into life-long employment relations with a single firm. Therefore, future employers can learn about individuals' abilities from the observable facts regarding earlier work relations. We show that these informational spill-overs have profound...

In many economic situations several principals contract with the same agents sequentially. Asymmetric learning about agents' abilities provides the first principal with an informational advantage and has profound implications for the design of incentive contracts. We show that the principal...