Personal accountability and cooperation in teams

Axel Sonntag and Daniel Zizzo

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019, vol. 158, issue C, 428-448

Abstract: In a real effort lab and online team production experiment, we analyze exerted effort under different conditions of individual accountability. In a repeated setting, we vary the degree to which production can be directly traced back to a collaborator's individual or randomly drawn effort level, respectively. We find that individuals produce much less and the decline of effort over time is significantly steeper under high as compared to low and endogenously chosen personal accountability. While endogenous accountability provides an option for monitoring others, it does not force subjects to learn about their under-performing peers, thus limiting the typical decline of contributions over time. We conclude that accountability one step removed may be an interesting institutional setting for repeated collaborations in contexts where low accountability for political, social or legal reasons is not a viable option.

Keywords: Team production; Imperfect observability; Information acquisition; Lab and online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D82 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:158:y:2019:i:c:p:428-448

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.12.014

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