We model the relationship between the number of tasks assigned to an employee and a firm's ability to motivate effort through informal performance-based bonuses. We show that assigning multiple tasks gives the firm a greater range of performance levels that can be rewarded. The firm takes...

Despite changing gender norms, few fathers decide to take parental leave after the birth of a child, and when they do, their leave spells are substantially shorter compared to mothers. This study examines how paternal leave-taking is affected by two key features of leave policies: flexibility in...

Economists and management scholars have argued that the scope of incentives to increase cooperation in organizations is limited as their use signals the prevalence of free-riding among employees. This paper tests this hypothesis experimentally, using a sample of managers and employees from a...

Based on a unique dataset of carbon emissions in China’s 2527 counties during 2008-2019 and 1.5 million firms’ energy use from National Tax Survey Dataset, we take advantage of the two rounds of accelerated depreciation policy for fixed assets in 2014 and 2015 in China as natural experiments...

Multiple studies suggest that, contrary to economic rationale, offering monetary incentives to complete a task can negatively affect task performance. This phenomenon is attributed to so-called crowding-out effects, in which monetary rewards “crowd out” non-monetary sources of value that...