Backscratching in Hierarchical Organizations

Valeria Maggian, Natalia Montinari () and Antonio Nicol�
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Antonio Nicolo'

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2018, vol. 34, issue 2, 133-161

Abstract: We experimentally investigate the role of reciprocity in sustaining the emergence of implicit collusive agreements in hierarchical organizations. We show that when an agent hires, on behalf of the principal, one worker out of two candidates: (i) low ability workers, being less entitled to be selected, are more likely to exert effort in a task that is exclusively beneficial to the agent; (ii) as a consequence, agents distort the hiring process in favor of low ability workers; and (iii) sharing a small part of the organization’s profits with the workers alleviates their effort distortion

JEL-codes: C91 J50 L14 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewy006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Backscratching in Hierarchical Organizations (2015)
Working Paper: Backscratching in Hierarchical Organizations (2015)
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:oup:jleorg:v:34:y:2018:i:2:p:133-161.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat

More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().