We analyze relational contracts for a set of agents when either (a) only aggregate output or (b) individual outputs are observable. A team incentive scheme, where each agent is paid a bonus for aggregate output above a threshold, is optimal in case (a). The team’s efficiency may increase...

We present an experimental study on how people take risk on behalf of others. We use three different elicitation methods, and study how each subject makes decisions both on behalf of own money and on behalf of another individual’s money. We find a weak tendency of lower risk-taking with...

We study to what extent collusive behavior is affected by the awareness of negative externalities. Theories of outcome-based social preferences suggest that negative externalities make collusion harder to sustain than predicted by standard economic theory, while sociological theories of social...

In repeated games, it is hard to distinguish true prosocial behavior from strategic instrumental behavior. In particular, a player does not know whether a reciprocal action is intrinsically or instrumentally motivated. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the relationship between...

Between and within firms, work teams compete against each other and receive feedback on how well their team is performing relative to their benchmarks. In this paper we investigate experimentally how teams respond to relative performance feedback (RPF) at team level. We find that when subjects...

Reward systems based on balanced scorecards typically connect pay to an index, i.e. a weighted sum of multiple performance measures. We show that such an index contract may indeed be optimal if performance measures are non-verifiable so that the contracting parties must rely on self-enforcement....

leaders and employees in an large international oil company. The purpose is to provide robust empiricalinsights on the individual and organisational determinants of perceived performance appraisalDesign/methodology/approach – Based on a powerful set of survey data (n 12,000), we specify...

In many tournaments it is the contestants themselves who deter-mine reward allocation. Labor-union members bargain over wage dis-tribution, and many …firms allow self-managed teams to freely determineinternal resource allocation, incentive structure, and division of labour.We analyze, and test...

Why does individual performance pay seem to prevail in humancapital intensive industries? We present a model that may explainthis. In a repeated game model of relational contracting, we ana-lyze the conditions for implementing peer dependent incentive regimeswhen agents possess indispensable...