Returns to Teamwork and Professional Networks: Evidence from Economic Research

Kevin Devereux

No 202101, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Teamwork is growing in developed economies, and workers in teams are increasingly compensated according to team output. Because parsing individual contributions to teamwork is difficult, I focus on scholarly economics research, which lists contributing authors. I use turnover to identify team value-added: an author's average output quality conditional on the value-added of coauthors. Linking the universe of scholarly economic research output to publicly available payroll records, I study the effect of value-added on salaries. Strikingly, coauthors' value-added has a greater effect on salaries than does own value-added, suggesting the value of professional networks dominates the effect of discounting contributions based on coauthor quality. Moreover, authors are compensated for the solo-authored output of their coauthors - which can not be reasonably attributed to them - demonstrating the value of professional networks.

Keywords: Human capital; Teamwork; Productivity; Performance pay; Non-partite networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 J33 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:wpaper:202101

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