Free Riding and Unequal Pay in Symmetric Teams

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Yildirim, Huseyin
• 署名单位: Duke University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20230179
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 289-323
• 关键词: Moral hazard; incentives; uncertainty; leadership; provision; projects

摘要

This paper studies dynamic incentive pay in teams where agents' efforts are perfect substitutes. It shows that the principal may unequally reward identical agents to mitigate dynamic free riding in the form of procrastination. Unequal pay effectively creates a team leader who overworks and symmetric followers who underwork. Such leader-follower teams emerge if (i) agents are relatively patient or few, or (ii) the principal sufficiently cares about or is not patient for project success. These findings contrast with the recent literature (e.g., Winter 2004), pinpointing effort complementarity as the source of unequal pay in symmetric teams.