We show that a team may favor self-sabotage to influence the principal’s contract decision. Sabotage increases a team member’s bonus and total team effort. If these benefits outweigh the reduction in the success probability, sabotaging the team is rational.

We offer a model that combines a knowledge based organizational structure with progressive learning of employees’ talent. We show that higher span of control is associated with better selected managers, higher wages, higher probability to be promoted, and higher turn-over in the early career...

This paper analyzes the impact of wage comparisons among inequity-averse agents on optimal incentive intensities in a linear–exponential–normal moral hazard model with multi-tasking. We consider individual and team production tasks that differ in that only individual production causes wage...

In Uttar Pradesh, teams of four are engaged to dig soil under the NREGA programme. In one treatment spouses work together; in the other treatment they work in separate teams. Working with spouses is associated with significantly higher output.

Consider an environment such as a political election where a principal requires the completion of multiple tasks, but an agent can only be rewarded with a hire/fire decision rather than an endogenously chosen monetary payment. When the principal hires a single agent to perform multiple tasks,...

Drawing on data from 916 Division 1 men’s college hockey games played during a recent six-year period in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), we find evidence that positive momentum within 458 two-game series does not exist when controlling for team quality. We find that neither...

We empirically test the positive relationship between market access and wages stated by New Economic Geography. Contrary to most estimations in other countries, we find evidence of significant spatial heterogeneity of this elasticity across Chilean communities.

We demonstrate that Big-Five personality traits are stable for working-age adults over a four-year period. Mean population changes are small and constant across age groups. Intra-individual changes are generally unrelated to adverse life events and are not economically meaningful.

Using cross-industry survey data, I examine how the determinants of the pace of work affect the probability of using piece rates. Internal determinants raise the likelihood of piece rates, while response to external needs lowers the probability.

Empirical evidence shows that competition among firms generates steep incentives inside firms. Incentive pay stimulates productive investments but may generate inefficient rent-seeking investments. I show that competition reduces firms’ profits and thereby the inefficient investments, which...