Strategic Incentives in Teams: Implications of Returns to Scale

This article demonstrates the critical relationship between the characteristics of the production function and the strategic incentives in a team. Equilibrium effort increases in team size when substitutability is low relative to returns to scale. Effort levels are actually strategic complements when returns to scale exceed the substitutability of members' effort. Moreover, even with equal shares the well‐known problem is determined by returns to scale and becomes worse as returns increase. While a target scheme can support the optimal output level as an equilibrium, it does not completely deter free riding. A team member will accommodate shirking by increasing their own effort within a remarkably large “accommodation zone” where the additional effort cost is less than the bonus. This accommodation of shirking by others exists for different returns to scale and even for very low levels of substitutability.     

An organizational alternative for academics: A sporting proposal

Conclusion Whether the distribution of talent among schools should be more equal or less equal is a statement having both positive and normative aspects. Like the distribution of income, one would suspect that there is considerable disagreement over the desired amount of equality in academic markets. And it is likely that perfect equality would exact an efficiency price. In the hitting department, for instance, many scholars benefit from agglomeration economies which might not exist under the proposed system.An additional equity versus efficiency issue relates to the training of new players: while the average quality of training might rise, the training from the top handful of major league teams would likely decline over time as the lower ranked teams drafted the top prospects and acquired free agents. On the other hand, the stigma of being employed by a lower-level team would not be so onerous, since most top draft choices would be expected to go to such teams.Since economists speak so often of formal models, it is obvious that the economics profession should get its own house in order first. The work incentives, risk definition, and pure joy of competition are all instrumental in the choice of this particular structural model. While it may not be a perfect model in terms of efficiency or the equity notions of some members of the profession, it may well be preferable to the status quo.     

不完善激励工资契约、团队成员流动与互助合作：职业声誉关注的角度

团队业绩导向的不完善激励工资契约和团队成员流动的综合作用对团队成员的职业声誉关注、最优激励工资契约和团队成员的互助合作的影响依赖于团队成员的风险规避程度。当团队成员的风险规避程度足够高时,团队成员的职业声誉关注效应受到激发,委托人通过提高对团队成员互助合作的显性激励强度可以有效促进团队成员的互助合作,而且团队成员的最优互助合作努力水平向上扭曲的程度随着团队成员流动的可能性提高而提高。     

Managerial Discretion and Task Interdependence in Teams

This study investigates whether task interdependence in teams alters the effectiveness of managerial discretion in motivating team performance. Teams are particularly useful when employees' tasks are interdependent—that is, when the degree to which the increase in team performance resulting from a team member's effort depends on the effort and skills of the other team members. The reason is that the more interdependent tasks are, the more employees need to coordinate their actions and help one another to achieve their objectives. Prior research analyzing settings where task interdependence is absent suggests that providing managers with discretion over team bonus allocation can improve team performance relative to equal team bonus allocations because it strengthens the link between contributions to team output and rewards. Economic theory suggests that managerial discretion will also improve team performance when task interdependence is present and information is efficiently used. However, we use behavioral theory to predict that managerial discretion is less effective in the presence of task interdependence, because managers do not fully incorporate all relevant information into bonus decisions and because managerial discretion hurts coordination and helping, which is particularly problematic under task interdependence. We find that while discretion over compensation has a positive effect on team performance relative to equal bonus allocation when task interdependence is absent, it has a negative effect when task interdependence is present. Additional analyses provide support for our underlying theory. Results of our study contribute to both theory and practice by suggesting that, ironically, managerial discretion may be most useful when the potential benefits of employing teams are lowest and least useful when the potential benefits are highest. Our results help explain why firms often grant managers only partial or no discretion over team members' compensation.     

In‐Group versus Out‐Group Trust: The Impact of Income Inequality

In this article, we adopt a variant of the trust game by Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) and the dictator game by Cox (2004) to determine if income inequality can activate in‐group favoritism and, if so, whether such a bias is strong enough to survive the removal of income inequality. We find evidence of in‐group favoritism only on the part of rich first movers. Rich first movers trust their in‐group members significantly more in the presence of income inequality not only before but also after they gain enough experience. Poor first movers, in contrast, do not exhibit such in‐group bias. They do not discriminate between in‐group and out‐group at the very outset of the experiment, and once they become experienced, they behave with significantly more trust toward the rich than toward the poor. We also find that in‐group and out‐group favoritism established in the past can be alleviated, but not completely removed, by an equal income distribution.     

Effort and Performance: What Distinguishes Interacting and Noninteracting Groups from Individuals?

We study how group membership affects behavior both when group members can and cannot interact with each other. Our goal is to isolate the contrasting forces that spring from group membership: a free‐riding incentive leading to reduced effort and a sense of social responsibility that increases effort. In an environment with varying task difficulty and individual decision making as the benchmark, we show that the free‐riding effect is stronger. Group members significantly reduce their effort in situations where they share the outcome but are unable to communicate. When group members share outcomes and can interact, they outperform groups without communication and individuals. We show that these groups do as well as the best constituent member would have done on his or her own.     

Assigning Intentions when Actions Are Unobservable: The Impact of Trembling in the Trust Game

This article reports laboratory experiments investigating behavior in which players may make inferences about the intentions behind others' prior actions based on higher- or lower-accuracy information about those actions. We investigate a trust game with first mover trembling, a game in which nature determines whether the first mover's decision is implemented or reversed. The results indicate that second movers give first movers the benefit of the doubt. However, first movers do not anticipate this response. Ultimately, it appears that subjects are thinking on at least three levels when making decisions: they are concerned with their own material well-being, the trustworthiness of their counterpart, and how their own actions will be perceived.     

The ASEAN investment area,other FDI initiatives,and intra‐ASEAN foreign direct investment

The idea of establishing ASEAN as a single market and production base that will make ASEAN a dynamic and competitive location requires, among others, the free flow of investment. As part of the effort to promote regional investment, particularly intra‐ASEAN investment, several schemes have been implemented such as the 1998 Framework Agreement on the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA). This study investigated the impact of the AIA and other foreign direct investment (FDI) initiatives on intra‐ASEAN FDI. The findings on the impact of the AIA, measured via several proxies, do not provide strong evidence of benefits from the AIA, or from other investment‐promoting initiatives. With equal treatment given to non‐ASEAN investors, ASEAN members may have to provide separate incentives to enhance local entrepreneurs' competitiveness, which should in the long run be translated into higher FDI from ASEAN—either to other ASEAN members or to non‐ASEAN countries. Overall, the results do not argue wholly against the idea of the AIA, given that some of the AIA proxies have a significant impact. Moreover, it is early days yet, and a larger impact may come with time.     

Forecast Accuracy and Consistent Preferences for the Timing of Information Arrival

We study a principal's choice of whether to produce an imperfect forecast about a firm's outcome either before or after an agent's effort choice. The early forecast affects the agent's effort choice, which means the forecast can also be used to infer information about the effect of the agent's effort on outcome. The late forecast is more accurate because, by working hard, the agent also learns about productivity, implying that the late forecast has an additional performance measurement role. With verifiable information, the principal prefers a late forecast when the agent's effect on the accuracy of the forecast is either large or small. The agent has consistent preferences when the agent's effect on the accuracy of the late forecast is not too large. With unverifiable information, the agent's information rents imply that the principal cannot use either forecast as a performance measure. Thus, the accuracy of the late forecast has no effect on the principal's preference. However, if the accuracy of the early forecast is low and its decision‐making function is diminished, the principal prefers a late signal.     

The Max‐Min Group Contest: Weakest‐link (Group) All‐Pay Auction

We investigate a group all‐pay auction in which each group's effort is represented by the minimum among the effort levels exerted by the group members and the prize is a group‐specific public good. We fully characterize the symmetric equilibria for two groups. There are four types of equilibria: the pure strategy equilibria in which all (active) players exert the same effort; the semi‐pure strategy equilibria in which the players in a group play the same pure strategy whereas those in the other group play the same mixed strategy; the nondegenerate mixed strategy equilibria with continuous support; and the nondegenerate mixed strategy equilibria with discontinuous support. We then analyze a general contest with n groups.     

Investment subsidies and time-consistent environmental policy

We describe a model of dynamic pollution abatement choices withheterogeneous agents where, due to the presence of a distributionalobjective and to the absence of incentive-compatible compensationmechanisms, the choice of a second-best level of emission taxationis time-inconsistent. In this model, we investigate whetherinvestment subsidies can act as a substitute for policy commitment.     

高层管理团队特征对企业技术创新投入影响的研究——激励的调节效应

文章以2009-2011年信息技术行业和生物制药行业的210家企业为样本,依据高层梯队理论和委托代理理论,实证研究了高管团队激励在高管团队同质性、异质性与企业技术创新投入之间的调节作用。研究表明,股权激励不能使成员年龄普遍较大的高管团队增加创新投入,但能使成员任期普遍较长和任期差异较大的高管团队增加创新投入;薪酬激励能使成员年龄普遍较大和教育程度普遍较高的高管团队增加创新投入,不能使成员年龄、任期、教育程度和职业背景差异较大的团队增加创新投入。     

日本在东亚地区自由贸易协定(FTAs)发展中的政策变化与选择

20世纪90年代后期，在东亚地区自由贸易协定迅速发展，随之日本也改变了在贸易关系中过去更多地依赖于传统的多边途径的做法，渴望通过更多的双边自由贸易协定来建立自己真正的自由贸易框架。从日本选择双边贸易自由化伙伴的经济、贸易和投资标准来看，东亚各国无疑是日本的最佳选择对象。     

Virtual Patent Extension by Cannibalization

We propose a model to explain the recent practice of pharmaceutical firms of introducing generic substitutes for their own branded products before their patents expire. By this early introduction, a branded product's provider seeks to establish a Stackelberg leadership role in the forthcoming generic substitute market. Along with the early introduction of the generic substitute for its branded product, the firm optimally raises the price of its branded product above its prior monopoly level. However, despite its Stackelberg leadership position in the subsequent generic substitute market, the firm's branded product's price declines for a sufficiently large number of entrants into that market. Consumers, who are assumed to be composed of a brand-loyal segment and a price-sensitive segment, are better off both before and after the branded product's patent expires as a result of the branded products' suppliers early introduction of generic substitutes. The branded products' suppliers are also better off but the generics' suppliers are not as a result of this practice. However, total producer profits are higher than they would be if the branded products' suppliers were not involved in supplying their own generic substitute.     

An Experimental Investigation of Moral Hazard in Costly Investments

Frequently, parties make sequential decisions regarding investments for which the probability of success or failure is dependent on the amount of total investment. This paper reports a series of experiments involving a costly investment game that is derived from the catalytic finance model of Morris and Shin (Global games: Theory and applications. In Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society, edited by M. Dewatripont, L. Hansen, and S. Turnovsky. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-114). The sequential nature of investments is such that the second investment could function as a complement to the initial investment or simply serve as a substitute to it, thereby creating moral hazard. The features of this game are similar to those of the ultimatum game. However, there are several key differences between the games that may account for the high frequency of materially self-interested behavior that we observe, particularly among second movers.     

Contracts under Wage Compression: A Case of Beneficial Collusion

This paper considers a principal-agent model with adverse selection and limited wage discrimination. Under wage compression, an agent may have an incentive to free ride on other agents by manipulating his private information. When collusion among the agents is not possible, the principal distorts the output schedule to reduce information rent associated with the free-riding opportunity. Under collusion, however, the principal can reduce the information rent by inducing side contracts among the agents, thus partly removing the distortion in the output schedule. We show that side contracts among the agents take place in equilibrium and that the prospect of collusion is beneficial.     

Education signaling,effort investments,and the market's expectations: Theory and experiment on China's higher education expansion

China's higher education expansion has led to significant changes in younger generations' educational investments and labor market outcomes, and this trend is expected to continue due to the recent post-graduate education expansion in response to economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper investigates the impact of higher education expansion on labor market participants' choices, beliefs, and learning effects through an extended education signaling model, and uncovers the behavioral patterns in response to this policy change using a laboratory experiment. We find that subjects playing the role of workers generally follow a threshold strategy, and the changes in their effort investments and received wages after the enrollment expansion are consistent with the theoretical prediction. Using a hierarchical clustering method, we estimate different types of empirical strategies adopted by the subjects. In the low-enrollment treatment, the three types of empirical strategies are more distinct, and there is a strong tendency for effort over-investment by low-ability workers and under-investment by high-ability workers. In the high-enrollment treatment, the distinction between the estimated strategy types becomes much smaller. An analysis using elicited beliefs suggests that effort over-investment stems from workers' inconsistent beliefs regarding firms' wage offers — this inconsistency persists even in the last few periods of the game. Our findings provide a belief-based explanation for the discussion on over-education and are of great policy relevance.     

项目团队下属间冲突管理模式的量表开发与评测——基于团队领导者的视角

项目团队下属间发生冲突往往不可避免,其对团队持续稳定和整体绩效有重要影响。现有研究对冲突管理的维度划分与量表设计均将视角聚焦于冲突当事人,关注其对冲突的反应和采取的行动。鲜有从团队领导者视角出发,研究其管理团队下属间冲突的模式及相应量表的开发。文章采用定性研究和定量研究相结合的方法,将领导管理下属间冲突的模式依据"关心程度—处置时间"两个维度分为决断(关心且迅速处置)、审慎(关心但花费较长时间)和回避(不关心)三种模式。通过量表开发与量表评测等过程,确定了基于团队领导者视角的项目团队下属间冲突管理模式量表。发展了项目团队冲突管理的理论和方法,为后续研究提供新量表工具的支持。     

乳制品加工企业质量控制策略进化博弈分析

结合市场上存在的“搭便车”现象,分别构建单种群和双种群进化博弈模型,分析了乳制品加工企业之间、乳制品加工企业与政府监管部门之间的质量控制策略空间及其演化趋势。结果表明：乳制品加工企业之间的单种群博弈和乳制品加工企业与政府监管部门之间的双种群博弈均存在三个进化稳定策略,“搭便车”收益、质量控制成本和政府惩罚力度等因素影响着群体策略空间及演化趋势。提高消费者质量意识和维权意识、加大政府惩罚力度、降低质量控制成本、扩大优质与劣质乳制品的价差能够有效防止“搭便车”行为,促进我国乳制品行业的健康发展。     

China's Bilateral Currency Swap Lines

We study the determinants of China's bilateral local currency swap lines that were established following the recent global finance crisis. It is found that economic factors, political considerations and institutional characteristics, including trade intensity, economic size, strategic partnership, free trade agreements, corruption and stability, affect the decision to sign a swap line agreement. Once a swap line agreement decision is made, the size of the swap line is then mainly affected by trade intensity, economic size and the presence of a free trade agreement. The results are quite robust with respect to the choices of the Heckman two‐stage framework or the proportional hazard model. The gravity effect captured by distances between China and its counterparts, if present, is mainly observed during the early part of the sample period under consideration.