IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v117y2015icp102-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Task divisions in teams with complementary tasks

Author

Listed:
  • Gregor, Martin

Abstract

A team leader and a team follower non-cooperatively produce a team-specific public good out of two complementary tasks. Both team members are identically productive and can contribute to both tasks. By moving first, the team leader effectively determines the division of the tasks in the team. We show that the existence of multiple but finitely many types of task divisions is associated with a non-convex leader's budget constraint. Non-convexity generates discontinuities and non-monotonicities in the equilibrium provision of the good and also in the follower's utility if incomes are redistributed within the team. Non-monotonicity of the follower's utility motivates the follower to give a cash transfer to the leader. Having received the cash transfer, the leader adopts a task division that compensates the contributions of the follower. Hence, we observe a non-cooperative gift exchange with a monetary gift to the leader and a subsequent non-monetary reward to the follower through a lighter task allocation. These gift exchanges disappear in the presence of infinitely many types of task divisions generated by a continuum of complementary tasks.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregor, Martin, 2015. "Task divisions in teams with complementary tasks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 102-120.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:117:y:2015:i:c:p:102-120
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.06.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115001808
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.06.017?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lei, Vivian & Tucker, Steven & Vesely, Filip, 2007. "Foreign aid and weakest-link international public goods: An experimental study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 599-623, April.
    2. Hubert Kempf & Grégoire Rota Graziosi, 2010. "Leadership in Public Good Provision: A Timing Game Perspective," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 763-787, August.
    3. Varian, H.R., 1989. "Sequential Provision Of Public Goods," Papers 89-17, Michigan - Center for Research on Economic & Social Theory.
    4. Richard Cornes, 1993. "Dyke Maintenance and Other Stories: Some Neglected Types of Public Goods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(1), pages 259-271.
    5. Giovanna Devetag & Andreas Ortmann, 2007. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-344, September.
    6. Villanacci, Antonio & Zenginobuz, Ünal, 2012. "Subscription equilibrium with production: Non-neutrality and constrained suboptimality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 407-425.
    7. Hausken, Kjell, 2008. "Strategic defense and attack for series and parallel reliability systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 186(2), pages 856-881, April.
    8. Cornes,Richard & Sandler,Todd, 1996. "The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521477185, January.
    9. Cornes, Richard & Hartley, Roger, 2007. "Weak links, good shots and other public good games: Building on BBV," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1684-1707, September.
    10. Warr, Peter G., 1983. "The private provision of a public good is independent of the distribution of income," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 13(2-3), pages 207-211.
    11. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    12. Debraj Ray & Jean-Marie Baland & Olivier Dagnelie, 2007. "Inequality and Inefficiency in Joint Projects," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 922-935, July.
    13. Baland, J-M & Platteau, J-P, 1997. "Wealth Inequality and Efficiency in the Commons," Papers 193, Notre-Dame de la Paix, Sciences Economiques et Sociales.
    14. Bardhan, Pranab & Ghatak, Maitreesh & Karaivanov, Alexander, 2007. "Wealth inequality and collective action," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1843-1874, September.
    15. Kolmar, Martin & Rommeswinkel, Hendrik, 2013. "Contests with group-specific public goods and complementarities in efforts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 9-22.
    16. Brookins, Philip & Lightle, John P. & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2015. "Optimal sorting in group contests with complementarities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 311-323.
    17. Vicary, Simon & Sandler, Todd, 2002. "Weakest-link public goods: Giving in-kind or transferring money," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1501-1520, September.
    18. Jordi Brandts & David J. Cooper, 2006. "A Change Would Do You Good .... An Experimental Study on How to Overcome Coordination Failure in Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 669-693, June.
    19. Hausken, Kjell, 2008. "Strategic defense and attack for reliability systems," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 93(11), pages 1740-1750.
    20. Itaya, Jun-ichi & de Meza, David & Myles, Gareth D., 1997. "In praise of inequality: public good provision and income distribution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 289-296, December.
    21. Edward Cartwright & Joris Gillet & Mark Van Vugt, 2013. "Leadership By Example In The Weak-Link Game," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2028-2043, October.
    22. Martin Gregor & Lenka Stastna, 2012. "The decentralization tradeoff for complementary spillovers," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(1), pages 41-69, March.
    23. Baland, Jean-Marie & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 1998. "Wealth Inequality and Efficiency in the Commons, Part II: The Regulated Case," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(1), pages 1-22, January.
    24. Martin Gregor, 2011. "Tradeoffs of foreign assistance for the weakest-link global public goods," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(2), pages 233-251, April.
    25. Sandler, Todd & Vicary, Simon, 2001. "Weakest-link public goods: giving in-kind or transferring money in a sequential game," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 71-75, December.
    26. Vicary, Simon, 1990. "Transfers and the weakest-link : An extension of Hirshleifer's analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 375-394, December.
    27. Jack Hirshleifer, 1983. "From weakest-link to best-shot: The voluntary provision of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 371-386, January.
    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. Hattori, Keisuke & Yamada, Mai, 2023. "Closing the Psychological Distance: The Effect of Social Interactions on Team Performance," MPRA Paper 117042, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Martin Gregor, 2011. "Tradeoffs of foreign assistance for the weakest-link global public goods," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(2), pages 233-251, April.
    2. Martin Gregor, 2012. "Modeling positive inter-jurisdictional public spending spillovers," Working Papers IES 2012/16, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jun 2012.
    3. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Dongryul Lee & Iryna Topolyan, 2013. "The Max-Min Group Contest," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 050, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    4. Alejandro Caparrós & Michael Finus, 2020. "Public good agreements under the weakest‐link technology," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(3), pages 555-582, June.
    5. TOSHIHIRO IHORI & MARTIN C. McGUIRE, 2007. "Collective Risk Control and Group Security: The Unexpected Consequences of Differential Risk Aversion," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(2), pages 231-263, April.
    6. Cornes, Richard & Hartley, Roger, 2007. "Weak links, good shots and other public good games: Building on BBV," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1684-1707, September.
    7. Alejandro Caparrós & Michael Finus, 2020. "The Corona-Pandemic: A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Regional and Global Governance," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(4), pages 913-927, August.
    8. Stefano Barbieri, 2023. "Complementarity and information in collective action," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(1), pages 167-206, January.
    9. Uler, Neslihan, 2009. "Public goods provision and redistributive taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 440-453, April.
    10. Lee, Dongryul, 2012. "Weakest-link contests with group-specific public good prizes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 238-248.
    11. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Iryna Topolyan, 2013. "The Attack-and-Defence Group Contests," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 049, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    12. Ghislain Dutheil de la Rochère & Jean-Michel Josselin & Yvon Rocaboy, 2011. "The role of aggregation technologies in the provision of supranational public goods: A reconsideration of NATO’s strategies," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 85-103, March.
    13. Barbieri, Stefano, 2017. "Voluntary public good provision with private information using order statistics," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 63-66.
    14. Paul Pecorino, 2015. "Olson’s Logic of Collective Action at fifty," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 243-262, March.
    15. Debraj Ray & Jean-Marie Baland & Olivier Dagnelie, 2007. "Inequality and Inefficiency in Joint Projects," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 922-935, July.
    16. Alexander Karaivanov, 2009. "Heterogeneity, returns to scale, and collective action," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(2), pages 771-807, May.
    17. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Iryna Topolyan, 2015. "The Group All-Pay Auction with Heterogeneous Impact Functions," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 069, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    18. Todd Sandler, 2015. "Collective action: fifty years later," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 195-216, September.
    19. Liu, Weifeng Larry & Sandler, Todd, 2024. "Public goods, group size, and provision aggregation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 146-167.
    20. Dongryul Lee & Joon Song, 2019. "Optimal Team Contests to Induce More Efforts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(3), pages 448-476, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gift exchange; Complementarity; Public good; Cash transfer; Sequential game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:eee:jeborg:v:117:y:2015:i:c:p:102-120. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    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.