Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments

Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft and Matthew Notowidigdo

No 13422, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper uses the random assignment of playing partners in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that the ability of playing partners affects the performance of professional golfers, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from laboratory experiments, grocery scanners, and soft-fruit pickers. In our preferred specification, we can rule out peer effects larger than 0.045 strokes for a one stroke increase in playing partners' ability, and the point estimates are small and actually negative. We offer several explanations for our contrasting findings: that workers seek to avoid responding to social incentives when financial incentives are strong; that there is heterogeneity in how susceptible individuals are to social effects and that those who are able to avoid them are more likely to advance to elite professional labor markets; and that workers learn with professional experience not to be affected by social forces. We view our results as complementary to the existing studies of peer effects in the workplace and as a first step towards explaining how these social effects vary across labor markets, across individuals and with changes in the form of incentives faced. In addition to the empirical results on peer effects in the workplace, we also point out that many typical peer effects regressions are biased because individuals cannot be their own peers, and suggest a simple correction.

JEL-codes: J01 J24 J3 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-soc
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published as Jonathan Guryan & Kory Kroft & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 34-68, October.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13422.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13422

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13422

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().