IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejtec/vtopics.6y2006i1n16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents

Author

Listed:
  • Bevia Carmen

    (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and CODE)

  • Corchón Luis C

    (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Abstract

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends on the interplay between technology, relative productivity of agents and the degree of meritocracy. In particular we show that, ceteris paribus, meritocratic systems give more incentives to sabotage than egalitarian systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Bevia Carmen & Corchón Luis C, 2006. "Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-29, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:topics.6:y:2006:i:1:n:16
    DOI: 10.2202/1534-598X.1240
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1534-598X.1240
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1534-598X.1240?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amartya K. Sen, 1966. "Labour Allocation in a Cooperative Enterprise," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 33(4), pages 361-371.
    2. Fabella, Raul V., 1988. "Natural team sharing and team productivity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 105-110.
    3. Macho-Stadler, Ines & Perez-Castrillo, J. David, 1993. "Moral hazard with several agents : The gains from cooperation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 73-100, March.
    4. Mui, Vai-Lam, 1995. "The economics of envy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 311-336, May.
    5. Michael Kremer, 1997. "Why are Worker Cooperatives So Rare?," NBER Working Papers 6118, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Roemer John E. & Silvestre Joaquim, 1993. "The Proportional Solution for Economies with Both Private and Public Ownership," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 426-444, April.
    7. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    8. Garance Genicot & Stergios Skaperdas, 2002. "Investing in Conflict Management," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 46(1), pages 154-170, February.
    9. Robert Gibbons, 1998. "Incentives in Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 115-132, Fall.
    10. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    11. Kai A. Konrad, 2000. "Sabotage in Rent-Seeking Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 409-419, Springer.
    12. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    13. Skaperdas, Stergios & Grofman, Bernard, 1995. "Modeling Negative Campaigning," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(1), pages 49-61, March.
    14. Pfingsten, Andreas, 1991. "Surplus-sharing methods," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 287-301, June.
    15. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Friebel, Guido & Pechlivanos, Lambros, 1999. "Teamwork Management in an Era of Diminishing Commitment," CEPR Discussion Papers 2281, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Itoh, Hideshi, 1991. "Incentives to Help in Multi-agent Situations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 611-636, May.
    17. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2005. "How Many Winners Are Good to Have? On Tournaments with Sabotage," IZA Discussion Papers 1777, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-580, June.
    19. Kong-Pin Chen, 2003. "Sabotage in Promotion Tournaments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 119-140, April.
    20. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2008. "How many winners are good to have?: On tournaments with sabotage," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 682-702, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Subhasish Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler, 2015. "Sabotage in contests: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 135-155, July.
    2. Nana Adrian & Marc M ller, 2019. "Partnerships with Asymmetric Information: The Benefit of Sharing Equally amongst Unequals," Diskussionsschriften dp1904, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    3. Arup Bose & Debashis Pal & David E. M. Sappington, 2010. "Equal Pay for Unequal Work: Limiting Sabotage in Teams," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 25-53, March.
    4. repec:bla:annpce:v:89:y:2018:i:1:p:87-107 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Chung, A., 2024. "Target Setting in Contests with Sabotage," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2409, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. Jörg Franke, 2014. "Equal, proportional, and mixed sharing of cooperative production under the threat of sabotage," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 253-273, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carmen Bevia & Luis Corchon, "undated". "Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 541.02, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    2. Jörg Franke, 2014. "Equal, proportional, and mixed sharing of cooperative production under the threat of sabotage," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 253-273, November.
    3. Subhasish Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler, 2015. "Sabotage in contests: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 135-155, July.
    4. Münster, Johannes, 2006. "Selection Tournaments, Sabotage, and Participation," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 118, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    5. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    6. Tat Y. Chan & Jia Li & Lamar Pierce, 2014. "Compensation and Peer Effects in Competing Sales Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1965-1984, August.
    7. Beviá, Carmen & Corchón, Luis C., 2009. "Cooperative production and efficiency," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 143-154, March.
    8. Oliver Baumann & Nils Stieglitz, 2011. "Motivating Organizational Search," DRUID Working Papers 11-08, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    9. Caroline Flammer & Jiao Luo, 2017. "Corporate social responsibility as an employee governance tool: Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 163-183, February.
    10. Münster, Johannes, 2006. "Selection tournaments, sabotage, and participation [Auswahlturniere, Sabotage und Teilnahme]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2006-08, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Fleckinger, Pierre & Martimort, David & Roux, Nicolas, 2023. "Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory," TSE Working Papers 23-1421, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jan 2024.
    12. Garicano, Luis & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2005. "Sabotage in Tournaments: Making the Beautiful Game a Bit Less Beautiful," CEPR Discussion Papers 5231, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. repec:bla:annpce:v:89:y:2018:i:1:p:87-107 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Loukas Balafoutas & Florian Lindner & Matthias Sutter, 2012. "Sabotage in Tournaments: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(4), pages 425-441, November.
    15. Áron Kiss, 2009. "Coalition politics and accountability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 413-428, June.
    16. Brown, Alasdair & Chowdhury, Subhasish M., 2017. "The hidden perils of affirmative action: Sabotage in handicap contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 273-284.
    17. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status (preprint)," Working Papers halshs-01090241, HAL.
    18. Cedric Duvinage & Peter-J. Jost, 2019. "The Role of Referees in Professional Sports Contests," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(8), pages 1014-1050, December.
    19. Aditya U. Kulkarni & Christian Wernz, 2020. "Optimal incentives for teams: a multiscale decision theory approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 288(1), pages 307-329, May.
    20. Luis Garicano & Richard A. Posner, 2005. "Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 151-170, Fall.
    21. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Sarena F. Goodman & Lesley J. Turner, 2013. "The Design of Teacher Incentive Pay and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from the New York City Bonus Program," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 409-420.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cooperative production; sharing rules; sabotage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • J54 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:topics.6:y:2006:i:1:n:16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.