rare knowledge, and stand ready to help the other workers. In our laboratory experiment, we find that most groups …Following Garicano (2000), we consider groups whose members decide what knowledge to acquire and how to use this … knowledge in production. If efficient production requires common knowledge, all group members should become workers and acquire …

We conduct the first empirical test of the knowledge burden hypothesis, one of several theories advanced to explain … increasing team sizes in science. For identification, we exploit the collapse of the USSR as an exogenous shock to the knowledge …