Do workers vary in their ability to work with others? I compare a given worker's productivity in solitary production to their value-added to team production to identify 'team skills': a worker's contribution to team production above and beyond that given by general skills.
- Presenter
- Date
- Friday 13 Dec 2019, 15:00 - 16:00
- Type
- Seminar
- Room
- EB-12
- Building
- E Building
The identifying assumption is that workers use general skills in both production functions, but team skills only in team production. Professional men's tennis provides a useful setting to compare solo work (singles) to teamwork (doubles). I find that 50% of variation in team output is explained by team skills.
This is robust to a variety of specifications, including nonlinearities in player inputs. Players sort positively-assortatively along both skill dimensions, yielding indirect returns to skills of about half the magnitude of the direct returns. The results indicate that some players do have a comparative advantage at teamwork, and they magnify the advantage by matching to teammates with similar skill levels.
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The ECASE team
Jan van Ours, Thomas Peeters, Francesco Principe and Sam Hoey
