Sharing the Fame but Taking the Blame: When Declaring a Single Person Responsible Sovles a Free Rider Problem

Xinyu Li and Wendelin Schnedler

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Teams are formed because input from different people is needed. Providing incentives to team members, however, can be difficult. According to received wisdom, declaring all members responsible fails because real responsibility for team output "diffuses." But why? And why and when does formally declaring one member "responsible" mean that this member can be attributed "real" responsibility? We offer a model that answers these questions. We identify when jointly declaring a team responsible results in reputation free-riding. We show that declaring one person responsible can overcome this problem but only if all other team members are protected from being sanctioned.

Keywords: reputation free riding; collective punishment; formal and real responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D86 K12 K13 L23 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
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Working Paper: Sharing the Fame but Taking the Blame: When Declaring a Single Person Responsible Solves a Free Rider Problem (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:306485

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