But I Like Doing This! Enjoyable Tasks, Contracting, and Automation

Joshua Gans

No 35309, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Workers sometimes enjoy productive tasks and voluntarily devote unpaid time to them. We study O-ring jobs in which firms can either price a complete task bundle or specify paid task floors while workers remain free to add time. For any allocation supported by both hourly contracts, the wage bill is identical: voluntary top-up is not a discount. The contracts differ because paid floors cannot cap attractive tasks below the worker's voluntary supply. This implementability constraint adds a containment motive for automation alongside replacement and scale effects. It also makes payroll measures incomplete: conditional on a common automated set and a common AI technology, jobs with the same payroll footprint can differ in worked time and task mix. Rich salaried bundle pricing removes the hourly-contract distortion.

JEL-codes: J22 J24 J31 J33 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
Note: PR
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