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A New Solution for the Moral Hazard Problem in Team Production

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  • Pablo Guillen

    (School of Economics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia)

  • Danielle Merrett

    (Business School, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia)

  • Robert Slonim

    (School of Economics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia)

Abstract

We propose an intergroup competition scheme (ICS) to theoretically solve free riding in team production and provide experimental evidence from a voluntary contribution mechanism public goods game. The ICS includes an internal transfer payment from the lowest to highest contributing team proportional to the difference in group contributions. The ICS requires minimal information, makes the efficient contribution a dominant strategy, and is budget balanced. These features make the ICS ideally suited to solve the moral hazard problem in team production. Our experiment demonstrates that the ICS raises contributions to almost reach optimality with the appropriate parameters. We also show experimentally that the success of the ICS can be primarily attributed to the effect of higher returns and to the introduction of competition, and it is not due to the introduction of potential losses or information regarding other groups.Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1922 . This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics .

Suggested Citation

  • Pablo Guillen & Danielle Merrett & Robert Slonim, 2015. "A New Solution for the Moral Hazard Problem in Team Production," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(7), pages 1514-1530, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:61:y:2015:i:7:p:1514-1530
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.1922
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    2. Beekman, Gonne & Cheung, Stephen L. & Levely, Ian, 2017. "The effect of conflict history on cooperation within and between groups: Evidence from a laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 168-183.
    3. Wang, Jianwei & Yu, Fengyuan & He, Jialu & Chen, Wei & Xu, Wenshu & Dai, Wenhui & Ming, Yuexin, 2023. "Promotion, Disintegration and Remediation of group cooperation under heterogeneous distribution system based on peer rating," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    4. Luke Boosey & R. Mark Isaac & Abhijit Ramalingam, 2021. "Limiting the Leader: Fairness Concerns in Team Production with Leader-Determined Monitoring," Working Papers 21-11, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    5. Boosey, Luke & Isaac, R. Mark & Ramalingam, Abhijit, 2024. "Limiting the leader: Fairness concerns and opportunism in team production," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 209-244.
    6. Chen, Yi-Yi, 2020. "Intergroup competition with an endogenously determined prize level," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 759-776.

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