Teams are increasingly popular decision-making and work units in firms. This paper uses a novel real effort experiment to show that (a) some teams in the workplace reduce their members’ private benefits to achieve a group optimum in a social dilemma and (b) such endogenous choices by...

A novel laboratory experiment is used to show that mismatching between task preferences and task assignment undermines worker productivity and leads to free riding in teams. We elicit task preferences from all workers. Workers' endogenous sorting into tasks significantly improves productivity...