Teamwork has become more important in recent decades. We show that larger teams generate an unintended side effect: individuals who finish their PhD when the average team in their field is larger have worse career prospects. Our analysis combines data on career outcomes from the Survey of...

Team production is increasingly common in bench science, because scientists specialize and then combine their skills in a team. We argue that team production makes it more difficult to identify the quality of a junior scientist, as her productivity cannot be perfectly distinguished from others...